
T".i 



Book , Ql 






r 



LITERATURE AND ART 



GREAT BRITAIN 



LONDON : PRINTED BY 

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 

AND PARLIAMENT STREET 



AN HISTORICAL VIEW 



OF 



LITERATURE AND ART 



IN 



GREAT BRITAIN 



FROM THE ACCESSION OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER 
TO THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA 



BY 



j/ MURRAY VrAHAM, M.A. 




CL 



K. 



LONDON 
LONGMANS, GREEN. AND CO. 



The rigJit of ircinslaliott is resrfTcd. 



PREFACE. 



An historical account of a nation's Literature 
and Art appears entitled to consideration as an 
important part of Its general history. Connected 
narratives of public events, their motives, incidents 
and results, form the usual material of historical 
composition, a department of writing In which it has 
been the practice, if not altogether to Ignore, at least 
to treat in a very summary manner, the literary and 
aesthetic development of the national thought and 
taste. This defect, if such it be, has to some extent 
been supplied, though In a detached and irregular 
way, by the separate treatises and biographies which 
have been at different times published. In the 
following pages I have endeavoured to remedy the 
Inconvenience arising from so much want of con- 
nection In the sources of our knowledge of the 
Literature and Art of Britain, as developed In their 
finer and more popular forms during the most recent 
period of its annals. 



■^'1 PREFACE. 

The productions of living authors and artists 
have as a rule been excluded from this Historical 
View ; experience proving that the oscillations of 
opinion and taste require a few years to steady 
themselves, so as to admit of even an approximately 
correct estimate being formed of the productions 
either of literature or of art. 

For the sake of distinctness, and to give such 
precision of treatment as mxay render the work 
useful as well as interesting to the reader, I have 
handled the several branches of the subject — Lite- 
rature, Architecture, Painting, and Sculpture — 
separately ; illustrating each by occasional passages 
of poetry and prose, while studying also to preserve 
a certain unity of treatment by remarking, where it 
occurs, their mutual bearing upon one another. 

At the risk of sometimes going over ground 
already occupied by biographies and other books, 
I have referred to literary compositions as well as 
to works of art in their several divisions in a chro- 
nological sequence; availing myself of the most 
accurate information to be had as to facts and dates 
in books of authority, whether of old or more recent 
date. Without pretending to much originality or 
novelty, I venture to hope that some things may 
have been put in a new light, and some matters 
noticed which have not hitherto received attention. 



PREFACE. Vll 



To give a beginning and an end to the historical 
period fixed upon, the Accession of the House of 
Hanover and the Reign of Queen Victoria have 
been taken as Hmlts ; but it is not my intention to 
make the treatment of the subject In its various 
divisions so sharp and arbitrary as to be bounded 
either at the beginning or the end by a particular 
year. Thus the poetry of Pope commencing in the 
reign of Queen Anne, the notice of it begins in that 
reign, while the chapter on dramatic literature takes 
a retrospective glance over the preceding reigns ; 
and the survey of architecture requires, from its 
•bearings and connection, some reference back to the 
time of Jones and Wren. As regards the schools of 
painting and sculpture In Great Britain, both take 
their rise after the accession of George I. 

Literature, In the more extended sense of the 
term, may be held as comprehending, in addition to 
other literary compositions, works of philosophy, 
science, politics, ethics, theology, law and medicine. 
It Is proposed to exclude such branches of com- 
position from the present work, and to restrict It to 
the following; — History and Biography, Fictitious 
Narrative, Poetry, The Drama, Periodical Writing 
and Essays on literature and life and manners, with 
a short concluding chapter on Epistolary Writing 
and books of Voyages and Travels. 



Vlll PREFACE. 



Art IS viewed In its three principal phases of 
Painting, Sculpture and Architecture; Architecture 
taking precedence historically of the other two, as 
having been earlier cultivated and practised by 
native artists. 

I have been led by the interest of this part of 
the subject to add to the historical notices more 
criticism than was at first intended. It has been 
justly observed by a modern critic, that ' Art, like 
poetry, Is addressed to the world at large, not to a 
special jury of professional masters ; ' and I may 
perhaps Indulge the hope that the critical remarks 
made in the course of these notices will be found to 
be in accordance with what Mr. Addison,^ when 
speaking of the laws and rules of art, calls ' the 
general sense and taste of mankind,' and at the 
same time not altogether out of accordance with the 
opinion of professors of art. 

Assuming a previous general education, some 
special training may be requisite, in art at all events, 
if not also in literature, to found an exact knowledge 
of the qualities that go to constitute a good building, 
picture or statue. But, thanks to the Increased 
opportunities in recent years of acquiring Instruction 
by means of public Institutions, professional dls- 



Spedator, No. 29. 



PREFACE. IX 



courses and books, access to galleries and collec- 
tions, and foreign travel, the ' layman in art ' has it 
in his power to attain a certain training both of eye 
and mind, and also a certain amount of knowledge, 
which if not actually technical, is yet such as to 
enable him to distinguish the right and true in art 
from the false and meretricious. As Dryden is 
said to have discovered towards the close of his life, 
after the public judgment had been improved by his 
many critical dissertations on literature, that his 
readers were at last made too skilful to be easily 
satisfied, so it may have happened in the present 
day that non-professional critics in art have ac- 
quired and been gradually taught some little know- 
ledge of the subject. 

The standard of taste in matters of art as in 
literature would seem to be of complex character, 
and to have relation as well to the opinion of those 
who read books, employ architects and buy pictures, 
as to the opinion of the literary men and artists who 
produce the works. The professional and the lay 
element, the trained taste of the former and the ap- 
preciative judgment of the latter, act and re-act upon 
'each other, teaching and being taught alternately. 
And a standard of taste is thus imperceptibly 
formed by the combined operation of sound and 
skilful training on the part of authors and artists, 



X PREFACE. 



and a discerning appreciation in a fair and liberal 
spirit on the part of the public. This standard 
comes to be of practical application in an Historical 
View such as the present, which in its survey of 
the productions of literature and art proceeds neces- 
sarily upon the plan of selection rather than of a 
complete or very full enumeration. 



CONTENTS, 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

On the condition generally of Literature and literary men, and of 
Architecture, Fainting and Sculpture in Great Britain upon the 
Accession of the House of Hanover .... page i 



BOOK L— LITERATURE. 

CHAPTER I. 

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 

English Historical Writing prior to 1754 — Hume's History of 
England — Dr. Robertson's Historical Compositions — Gibbon's 
' Dechne and Fall of the Roman Empire' — Later Historical 
Works — Biographical Literature in the Last and Present 
Centuries 27 

CHAPTER IL 

FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE. 

Commencement of modern English Fiction — Novels of Defoe, 
Swift, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett — ' Tristram Shandy ^ 
of Sterne — Tales of Johnson and Goldsmith — Romance of 
' Castle of Otranto,' followed by the Romances of Mrs. Rad- 
cliffe and Clara Reeve, &c. — Novels of Miss Burney, of Henry 
Mackenzie, and others — of Miss Edgeworth — of Sir Walter 
Scott — of later writers of Fiction 47 

CHAPTER HI. 

POETRY. 

Can Poetry be defined ? — Poetry of Pope, of two kinds — Satirical 
Poems of Johnson — Of Churchill— Poetry of Thomson — Of 
Ramsay — Of Dr. Edward Young — Lyrics of Collins and Gray 
— Poems of Goldsmith — Beattie — Warton and others — Poetry 
and original manner of Cowper ']}^ 



xu CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

POETRY — continued. 

Original Poetry of Burns — of Crabbe — of Bowles, connecting the 
Poetry of the i8th century with that of the 19th — Poetry of the 
Delia Cruscans — Gifford's Baviad and Mseviad — Mathias' Pur- 
suits of Literature — Poems of Samuel Rogers and others page 98 

CHAPTER V. 

POETRY — contiftued. 

Poetry, pursuing the new direction in which it had been tending, 
bases itself on a Theory — Influence of the study of German 
Literature — Poetry of the disciples of the new School — Of 
Wordsworth — Its treatment by the Edinburgh Review — 
Poetry of Coleridge — Poems of Southey — Of Wilson, and 
others . . » no 

CHAPTER VL 

POETRY — continued. 

Poems of Thomas Moore— Of Campbell— Of Sir Walter Scott- 
Lord Byron's poetry — Its personal character — The more subtle 
and abstract poetry of Shelley — The poetry of Keats — Its irre- 
gular beauty, and treatment by the Quarterly Review . . 143 

■ CHAPTER VIL 

THE DRAMA. • 

Retrospective glance at the state of the Drama between the Re- 
storation and the reign of Queen Anne — Dryden — Otway — 
Congreve — Farquhar — Its immorality exposed by Jeremy 
Collier — Subsequent course of the British Drama : I. In Tra- 
gedy — Addison's 'Cato' — French influence — Decline of Tra- 
gedy — Domestic tragedies of Lillo and Moore — Tragedy of 
Douglas — The 'Mysterious Mother' of Walpole — German 
adaptations — Recurrence to the older Enghsh models — Plays 
of Joanna Baillie and others — Dramatic Poems of Lord Byron : 
— 11. Course of the Drama in Comedy — 'Careless Husband' 
of Gibber — Genteel Comedy — Pantomime— English Opera — 
' Beggars' Opera ' of Gay — Comedy of the ' Provoked Hus- 
band' — Low Comedy — Personal Comedy of Foote — Senti- 
mental Comedy — Comedies of Goldsmith — of Sheridan — Other 
comedies of mixed character 173 



CONTENTS. Xlll 



CHAPTER VIII. 

PERIODICALS AND ESSAYS. 

Periodical Literature from the end of the reign of Anne to the 
Rambler of Johnson — Idler — World — Mirror and Lounger of 
Mackenzie — Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews make a new 
era in periodical writing — Separate Essays on general subjects, 
of Warton, Hume, Burke, Mackintosh, Price, and others page 206 



CHAPTER IX. 

epistolary WRITING; VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. 

I. Qualities of epistolary style — Letters of Swift — Pope — Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu — Gray — Horace Walpole — Later epis- 
tolary writing — II. Qualities of style for travel writing — Books 
of travels 225 



BOOK IL— ARCHITECTURE. 

CHAPTER I. 

ARCHITECTXTRE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

Palladian-classical architecture — Architecture and landscape gar- 
dening — Variations of classical architecture — Greek — Italian — 
Street architecture 239 

CHAPTER II. 

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND ITS VARIETIES. 

Gothic architecture — Its revival and use in ecclesiastical edifices — 
Question of its application to secular buildings — Sir C. Barry 
and the Houses of Parliament — Tudor Gothic — Varieties . 257 



XIV CONTENTS. 



BOOK III.— PAINTING. 

CHAPTER I. 

The rise of native British Painting— Art- work of WilHam Hogarth 
— Sir Joshua Reynolds — Thomas Gainsborough — George Rom- 
ney page 275 

CHAPTER 11. 

LANDSCAPE PAINTING, RUSTIC AND ANIMAL PAINTING. 

Richard Wilson — Gainsborough — Morland — James Ward . . 298 
CHAPTER III. 

PAINTING AND BOOK-ILLUSTRATION. 

The Art of Thomas Stothardt— Of Wilham Blake . . .306 
CHAPTER IV. 

HISTORICAL PAINTING. 

The historical art of West — Copley — Great aims and imperfect 
performance of historical painters — Barry — Mortimer — The 
Runcimans — Fuseli — Northcote — Opie 313 

CHAPTER V, 

LATER BRITISH PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 

The Portrait-painting of Sir W. Beechey — Of Hoppner — Owen — 
Phillips — Jackson — Sir T. Lawrence — Sir Martin Shee — Sir H. 
Raeburn — Sir J. Watson Gordon — Graham Gilbert . . -333 

CHAPTER VI. 

LATER BRITISH HISTORICAL PAINTING. 

Haydon — Hilton — Etty — David Scott — Change in the manner 
of historical painting — Sir D. Wilkie — Sir C. Eastlake — Sir W. 
Allan — Thomas Duncan — High art in historical painting dis- 
played in the works of Dyce and Maclise 349 



CONTENTS. XV 



CHAPTER VII. 

LIFE AND MANNERS PAINTING, 



Original painting of Sir David Wilkie — Of Mulready — Painting 
of subjects from popular authors — Newton — Leslie — Egg — Life 
and manners painting — Miiller— John Phillip . . PAGE 374 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BRITISH LANDSCAPE-PAINTING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 

The Art work of Constable and Turner — of Collins — Bonington — 
Sir W, Callcott — Productions of Martin and Danby — Of the 
Scottish school of landscape — the Nasmyths — Thomson of 
Duddingstone — Macculloch — Painting of Roberts and Stanfield 389 

CHAPTER IX,— Supplementary. 
Water-Colour Drawing — Engraving 414 



BOOK IV.— SCULPTURE. 

CHAPTER I, 

BRITISH SCULPTURAL ART. 

Rise of British Sculpture — Flaxman and his immediate prede- 
cessors — Nollekens, Bacon, Banks — High art of Flaxman — 
Sculptural art of Sir R, Westmacott — Sir F. Chantrey — W. 
Behnes .421 

CHAPTER II, 

LATER BRITISH SCULPTURE. 

Sculptural works of Baily and Wyatt — Tendency of their ideal 
art — High promise of Musgrave L, Watson — Art-work of 
Josephs, Fillans, and Park — Grecian art and aspirations of 
John Gibson — Sculpture of Spence — Munro — Macdowell . . 443 

INDEX 465 



HISTORICAL VIEW 



OF 



BRITISH LITERATURE AND ART 



>>e<o 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

On the condition generally of Literature arid literary men, 
and of A rchitecturey Painting, and Sculpture in Great 
Britain up07t the Accessio7t of the House of Hanover. 

I. LITERATURE. 

The accession of the House of Hanover to the 
throne of Great Britain, in the year 1714, however 
important in a constitutional point of view, is not 
usually considered to have exercised a beneficial 
influence upon literature. George I. and George II., 
Germans by birth, education, and habits, showed 
very little regard for literature and the arts ; the 
upper and educated classes, with few exceptions, 
following in this the example of the Court. At 
the same time it must be acknowledged, in so far 
as regards the encouragement of literature by the What en- 
employment under government of literary men, that, mem^^' 
in the early years of the reign of George I., before s^^^^^to 
the time of Sir Robert Walpole's administration, letters. 

B 



VIE IV OF LirERATURE AND ART, 



such of them at least as professed Whig principles, 
appear to have been fairly considered. Addison 
was for a short time secretary of state, while Steele, 
Tickell, Congreve, Rowe, and Ambrose Phillips, re- 
ceived appointments and sinecure offices. Dr. Ed- 
ward Young, author of ' Night Thoughts,' was one 
of the very few literary men, even of the Whig 
party, who received a pension from the crown during 
the administration of Walpole. In the Pelham ad- 
ministration Fielding was rewarded for his writings 
in support of the government (through the advocacy 
of a friend in the Treasury) with the office of a 
Middlesex Justice of peace, then paid by fees and 
not much respected. 

It fared worse with the wits of the Tory party. 
Dr. Arbuthnot, author of the ' History of John 
Bull,' was deprived of his office of court physician.^ 
Prior, who with the authority and appointments of 
ambassador plenipotentiary had conducted the nego- 
tiations for the treaty of Utrecht, and Gay, who was 
secretary to Lord Clarendon in 1714 when am- 
bassador at the Court of Hanover, were obliged to 
have recourse to the aid of political friends, in the 
form of subscription editions of their poems — an aid 
which was very liberally afforded.^ 
Dedica- During a great portion of the i8th century flat- 

tions of ■_ 

1 To Arbuthnot and many of his friends might have been applic- 
able the hnes in Lord Lytton's sarcastic little comedy of Walpole : — 

For the Tories their Jacobite leanings disgrace, 
And a Whig is the only safe man for a place. 

'^ Before the death of Queen Anne, Gay had dedicated his 
Shepherd's Week to Lord Bolingbroke, which was considered by 
Dean Swift as the crime that obstructed all kindness from the 
House of Hanover. — Johnson's Life of Gay. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



tering dedications occupied an important position in literary 

works. 

literature. Sir Richard Steele in the dedication of 
his play of ' Grief a la Mode ' to the Countess of 
Albemarle, calls the right of dedication a ' poetical 
English liberty — an ancient charter by which the 
Muses have always a free access to the habitation of 
the Graces.' His dedication of the ' Conscious 
Lovers' to George I. was rewarded by a gift of 
500/. The patronage of authors by influential persons, 
sometimes granted from friendship and benevolence, 
more frequently as the price of laudatory dedications, 
continued beyond the time of Lord Chesterfield and 
Dr. Johnson ; although, in compositions of the early 
part of the i8th century, symptoms appear of author 
and patron becoming mutually tired of the custom.-^ 
Thus Dr. Young, while himself dedicating in every 
direction, complains (in the first satire of his ' Love 
of Fame '), 

Shall Poesy, like Law, turn wrong to right, 
And dedications wash an Ethiop white ? 

It is to the credit, however, of the literary men 
of the day that dedications appear to have been 
sometimes made from gratitude for past, as well as 
from expectation of future favours. In the dedica- 
tion, for example, of Fielding's ' Tom Jones' to the 
Hon. George Lyttelton, one of the commissioners of 
the treasury, the author intimates this as his motive ; 
stating that but for the substantial assistance he 
had received from him and from the Duke of 

^ Thomson's Castle of Indolence, 2nd canto. 

B 2 



4 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 

Bedford, while composing it, the work would never 

have been written. 
No pa- As yet there was no reading public, at least not 

oHtoa- ^o th^ extent of securing to a popular author a certain 
ture by a income from the sale of his works.^ There being^ 

reading ^ 

public. no general diffusion of a taste for literature, the 
patronage of a wide circle of purchasers of books 
had not yet arisen to supply the place of the patron. 
In this intermediate state the bookseller became at 
once patron and master. To be employed in writing 
wearisome compilations of science and history, or in 
performing whatever task the booksellers might set 
him, was the nearly inevitable fate, not only of the 
Ned Purdons of the time, but of every one w^ho 
m^ade literature his profession.'^ Of this memorable 
examples are afforded in the records of the early 
career of Goldsmith, of Smollett and Fielding, and of 
Dr. Johnson. The following view of matters in the 
reign of George ^I. is probably not exaggerated : — 

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, 
And pause awhile from letters to be wise. 
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail — 
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail. 
See nations, slowly wise and meanly just. 
To buried merit raise the tardy bust' ^ 

^ It may be no test of the number of persons who then read 

in their own houses, but in July 1759 <^"^y ^^^^ readers attended 

/ the public reading-room of the British Museum. — Official Acanmt. 

2 Edward Purdon, whose memory is preserved in Dr. Gold- 
smith's epitaph, was an Irishman, educated at Trinity College, 
Dublin, who wasted his patrimony and became a foot-soldier. He 
afterwards had recourse to literature, and translated Voltaire's 
Henriade. — Goldsjuitlis Works, ediUon 1791. 

3 Vanity of Human Wis//cs ; ij4g. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



The ascendancy and known opinions of Sir sir R. 
Robert Walpole were also unfavourable to litera- pole's 
ture and to men of literary talents. As they had no ^^^fj^" 
influence at Court or in Parliament, he neg^lected unfavour- 
them ; and as they tried occasionally to influence literature. 
public opinion by argum^ent or wit, he made them 
objects of suspicion and ridicule. But in so doing 
Walpole, adroit as he was, reckoned without his 
host, for the downfall of his administration was cer- 
tainly hastened by the attacks and sarcasms of the 
wits whom he had made his enemies. His mode of 
living in the country, where fox-hunting and drink- 
ing occupied most of the time, evinced a disregard 
for literary refinement and culture which his taste in 
pictures and his collection at Houghton could not 
make up for. In a letter to Horace Walpole, then Sept. 
living with his father at Houghton, the poet Gray, ^'^^^* 
his fellow-student at Cambridge, writes : — 

I sympathise with you in the suffenno-s which you fore- 
see are coming upon you. We are both at present, I 
imagine, in no very agreeable situation ; for my part I am 
under the misfortune of having nothing to do, but it is a 
misfortune, which, thank my stars, I can pretty well bear. 
You are in a confusion of wine, and roaring, and hunting, 
and tobacco, and, heaven be praised, you can pretty well 
bear it ; while our evils are no more, I believe we shall not 
much repine. I imagine, however, you will rather choose to 
converse with the living dead that adorn the walls of your 
apartments, than with the dead living that deck the middles 
of them, and prefer a picture of still life to the realities of 
a noisy one.^ 

Should literature not have made much advance 
in England during the first half of the i8th 

^ Mason's Life and Works of Gray. 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



Brilliant 
and ori- 
ginal 
works 
of this 
period. 



Influence 
of Pope 
on litera- 
ture, 
whether 
favour- 
able. 



century, it cannot be considered to have ebbed so 
decidedly, or the age to have been so dull, as some 
writers will have it. Several of the most brilliant 
productions of authors usually set down as belong- 
ing to the so-called Augustan age of Anne, but who 
survived her reign for a considerable time, appeared 
in the thirty years between 17 15 and 1745. Such 
were ' Gulliver's Travels ' and other original works 
of Dean Swift, and the sparkling ' Beggar's Opera' 
of Gay. Pope's ' Rape of the Lock,' the ' Dunciad,' 
and almost all his essays and epistles, were pub- 
lished between 1 7 14 and 1742. Defoe's 'Robinson 
Crusoe' and his other works of fiction, appeared in 
the ten years following 1719. The principal novels 
of Fielding and Smollett were written during the 
reign of George II. And early in the same reign 
two poets of the northern part of the island, Ramsay 
and Thomson, disregarding (perhaps in ignorance) 
the trammels of the classical school of Pope, pro- 
duced poetry of an original cast, appealing more 
directly to nature and human sympathies. 

An age so illustrated can hardly, in a literary 
point of view, be called dull or trivial ; and yet, with 
all this, it was not, particularly as regards poetry 
and critical taste, progressive. This was partly 
owing to the ascendancy of Mr. Pope and his style 
of poetry and criticism, which, although not formed 
upon, was to some extent influenced by, the manner 
of Boileau and other French writers bf the age of 
Louis XIV. The characteristics of this school were 
justness and precision of thought, neatness and point 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



of expression, rather than strong imagination or 
elevated sentiment.^ 

The sway of Pope In the realm of letters was as 
great as had been that of Dryden In a time gone by. 
Of the respect shown for him personally by his fellow- 
citizens of London, the following instance may be 
given, as recorded in Northcote's * Life of Sir 
Joshua Reynolds :' Li the year 1741, about a year 
before Mr. Pope's death, Reynolds had been sent by 
his master Hudson to make a purchase for him at a 
picture sale; — 

Reynolds was standing by the auctioneer, when he per- 
ceived a bustle at the farther end of the room, near the 
door. He soon heard the name of * Mr. Pope, Mr. Pope,' 
whispered from every mouth, for it was Mr. Pope himself 
who then entered the room. Immediately every person 
drew back to make a free passage for the distinguished 
poet, and all those on each side held out their hands for 
him to touch as he passed. Reynolds, although not in the 
front row, put out his hand also under the arm of the 
person who stood before him, and Pope took hold of his 
hand, as he likewise did to all as he passed. 

^ ' It seems to be a mistake to assume that the classical school 
of poetry (deriving its spirit and character chiefly from the ancient 
Roman) first arose in England after the Restoration, under the 
influence of the imitation of the French, which then became 
fashionable. The most that can be said is, that the French taste 
which became prevalent among us may have encouraged its 
revival ; for undoubtedly what has been called the classic school 
of poetry had been cultivated by English writers at a much earlier 
date ; nor is there any reason to suppose that the example of 
the modern poetry of France had any share in originally turning 
our own into that channel.' — Craik's English Litci'ature and 
Language^ ii. 117. 



8 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 

The influence of Pope extended beyond his life, 
to nearly the end of the i8th century. Not to 
mention numerous imitators, whose productions are 
now forgotten, his style is to be traced, ' with a dif- 
ference,' in the nervous verse of Johnson, in the per- 
sonal satire and vigorous invective of Churchill, in 
the melodious measures of Goldsmith, in the ' Plea- 
sures of Memory' of Mr. Rogers, in the * Baviad and 
Maeviad' of Gifford, the 'Pursuits of Literature' of 
T. J. Mathias, and in the ' English Bards and Scotch 
Reviewers' of Lord Byron. But with all this influ- 
ence over opinion, the school of Pope, however 
beneficially it may have acted upon language and 
versification, was too artificial and critical to be of 
great benefit to literature as a suggestive and in- 
spiring style of poetry. With the exception of a 
comparatively small portion of his poetry, the ten- 
dency of his writings and canons of criticism went 
rather to cramp imagination and feeling than to lend 
wings to either. 

The English poets of a subsequent generation no 
doubt partially emancipated themselves from the 
restraints of this school. Such were Thomson, 
Collins, Cowper, and Burns. At the same time it is 
worthy of observation how Cowper, while himself 
adopting a new style of writing and versification, 
never lost his inbred reverence for Pope and his 
contemporaries. This feeling evidently discovers 
itself in the following lines, although we mark the 
independence and boldness of the view Cowper ven- 
tures to take of the character of Pope's poetry. 
Referring to the writers who had the merit of puri- 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



fying, in the reign of Anne, the Hterary taste of the 
nation, he thus characterises the leading authors of 
that age : — ^ 

In front of these came Addison. In him 

Humour, in hoHday and sightly trim, 

Sublimity and Attic taste combined 

To polish, furnish, and delight the mind. 

Then Pope, as harmony itself exact, 

In verse well disciplined, complete, compact, 

Gave virtue and morality a grace. 

That, quite eclipsing pleasure's painted face, 

Levied a tax of wonder and applause 

Even on the fools that trampled on their laws. 

But he (his musical finesse was such, 

So nice his ear, so delicate his touch) 

Made poetry a mere mechanic art ; 

And every warbler has his tune by heart. 

Nature imparting her satiric gift. 

Her serious mirth, to Arbuthnot and Swift, 

With droll sobriety they raised a smile 

At Folly's cost, themselves unmoved the while. 

That constellation set, the world in vain 

Must hope to look upon their like again. 



// ARCHITECTURE. 



In the early part of the i8th century the favourite 
and usual style of architecture for new buildings 
in England was that form of classical architecture 
usually called Palladian. The course through which Palladian 
this ascendancy of the Palladian or Italian style was intro- 
arrived at is sufficiently obvious. The early English ^Jj^^i^jJ^ 

* Cowper's Table Talk, book i. 



lO VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 

Sketch or Gothic Style of building (of a more marked archi- 
EndLh tectural character in point of construction and other- 
architec- ^ise in ecclesiastical than in secular buildings) had 

ture. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

followed close upon the introduction in the nth and 
1 2th centuries of the Romanesque and Norman. 
In ecclesiastical architecture, the pointed Gothic, 
however derived, soon became prevalent, the best 
examples of English Gothic being in the pointed 
style.^ Towards the commencement of the i6th 
century it had become debased in manner, and its 
pointed arching became lowered and flattened. 
During the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, 
what has been called the Tudor style in civil and 
domestic architecture took the place of the older 
English and more castellated style ; adopting, after 
the date of the Reformation, more or less of Italian 
detail.^ For about a century and a half subsequent 

^ In Scottish Gothic buildings the round arch continued in use 
much longer than in the southern part of the island, and up to 
the time of the Reformation was not unfrequently introduced 
along with the pointed arch in the same edifice. — Billings' Baronial 
and Ecclesiastical Architectui'e of Scotland. 

2 In one of Pope's letters to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 
(17 1 8), a curious description is given of an old English country 
house in which the poet was then living, ' that seemed to have 
been built before rules were in fashion ; the whole is so disjointed, 
and the parts so detached from each other, and yet so joining 
again, one can't tell how, that (in a poetical fit) you'd imagine it 
had been a village in Amphion's time, where twenty cottages had 
taken a dance together, were all out, and stood still in amazement 
ever since.' From the porch to the 'venerable tower, so like that 
of the church just by that the jackdaws build in it as if it Avere 
the true steeple,' everything is irregular. The great hall is high 
and spacious, lighted by one vast arched window, coloured with 
scutcheons of painted glass, but now so uninhabited and dreary 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. II 

to the Reformation there does not seem to have 
been much ecclesiastical building in England, the 
supply of churches handed down from Roman 
Catholic times being sufficient for the demand ; so 
that it was chiefly In secular architecture that this 
transition style manifested itself The main forms 
and features of early English building, modified 
perhaps but still existing — square or round towers 
surmounted by little turrets, lofty gables, roofs fre- 
quently embattled and of a much higher pitch than 
was usual in the south of Europe, were adhered to ; 
more or less enriched, some will say beautifully, 
others fantastically, with door and window ornament, 
balustrades, and other classical details. Longleat, 
Wollaton, Hatfield, Caius College, and other build- 
ings at Cambridge and Oxford, Burleigh, Holland 
House, Heriot's Hospital at Edinburgh, Drumlanrig 
in Dumfriesshire, are examples of this style, which 
extended, with an increasing tendency to Italian de- 
tail, through the reign of James I. The houses of 
the nobility were often built with quadrangles like 
the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, which had 
many features in common with the great houses 
and halls in the country. 

that ' it was but t'other night an owl flew in hither and mistook it 
for a barn.' The hall lets you into the parlour, furnished with 
historical tapestry, whose marginal fringes confess the moisture of 
the air; and next to this come a pigeon-house, brewhouse, green 
and gilt parlour, chaplain's study, servants' hall ; ' and by the side 
of it, up six steps, the old lady's closet, which has a lattice into 
the said hall, that while she said her prayers she might cast an 
eye on the men and the maids.' On the ground floor were twenty- 
four apartments. 



12 VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. 

Although appearing in a rather questionable 

shape, as regards purity and correctness of style, 

there is something very picturesque and pleasing 

in the fanciful richness and adornments of the 

Reigns of buildings of this age. In spite, too, of their Italian 

Elizabeth , 

and leatures, they possess a general character much 

James I. ^^^.^ ^^.^1^, English than either the Palladian that 
came after, or the pure Gothic of the preceding age, 
which at the same period was common to France 
and Germany as well as to England. In the earlier 
of the Tudor buildings foreign architects seem to 
have been employed.^ But from the close of the 
reign of Elizabeth and to the commencement of the 
1 8th century, architecture, in its highest walks, came 
to be an art exercised by the heads and hands of 
inigo native artists. In the person of Inigo Jones, who 
Jones. flourished in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., 
England possessed an architect skilled in his pro- 
fession, accomplished by foreign travel, and inferior 
to no other of his time. The earlier works ascribed 
to him were mostly in the transition manner of 
building, massive in their features and picturesque 
in their enrichment. In his later works he pursued 
the direction to which his art had been tending, and 
His produced designs more decidedly Italian and classical 

classical jj^ their character. Of the desls^ns ascribed to Inieo 

arcnitec- *=• ^ 

ture. Jones that were executed, Wilton House, in Wiltshire, 

is regarded as one of the best in the classical style. 
The house of Amresbury, in the same county, is 
interesting as one of the earliest examples of the 

^ Walpole's Anecdotes^ i. 196. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



type on which so many country seats were afterwards 
erected ; consisting, for the most part, of a rusticated 
basement containing the dining and business rooms, 
then a principal floor and bed-room storey, with 
attics in the roof ^ Upon the basement, and usually 
running through the two upper storeys, was the 
everlasting portico. 

Following with variations these general features, 
the English houses in this style, of moderate size, 
differed from the Palladian houses of Italy and 
Spain in one essential particular, that they had no 
central cortile or patio, which, from the first, was 
seen to be unsuitable to the climate of Britain. 

The fame of Inigo Jones as an architect rests to 
a considerable extent on his original designs for the 
palace of Whitehall, published in a large volume by 1727. 
William Kent. Of these, however, but an imper- 
fect notion can be formed from the only portion 
of the building completed ; for the Banquetting 
House, though of intrinsic merit as a piece of 
architecture, being only part of a whole, has an 
isolated appearance. 

Immediately after Jones, appeared another first- 
class English architect — Sir Christopher Wren, sir c. 
The fire In London of 1666 rendering necessary the ^is 



rebuilding of St. Paul's, and of a considerable part 
of the City and its churches. Wren was employed 
in the great work of the cathedral. He also gave 
a plan for a new disposition of the lines of streets, 
which, had it been adopted, might possibly have 

^ Fergusson's History of Modem Ardiitcdiire, p. 264. 



works. 



14 VIEW OF LITERATURE AAD ART. 

anticipated, or perhaps rendered unnecessary, some 
of the recent alterations in the City. On this pro- 
posed plan Sir Joshua Reynolds remarks (in his 
13th Discourse) : — 

The forms and turnings of the streets of London and 
other old towns are produced by accidents, without any 
original plan or design ; but they are not always the less 
pleasant to the walker or spectator on that account. On 
the contrary, if the city had been built on the regular 
plan of Sir Christopher Wren, the effect might have been, 
as we know it is in some new parts of the town, rather un- 
pleasing ; the uniformity might have produced weariness, 
and a slight degree of disgust. 

Of St. Paul's enough has been said and written. 
The building was begun in 1675, and finished in 
1 7 10. In its style of architecture it takes rank in 
Europe as second only to St. Peter s at Rome. It 
is here referred to chiefly as showing the pre- 
eminence accorded in England at the date of its 
building to the classical style ; Wren himself, in his 
later life, formally declaring that throughout all his 
schemes of this colossal structure he had religiously 
endeavoured to follow the principles of the best 
Greek and Roman architecture.^ 

Fifty-one parochial churches in London were 
erected simultaneously with St. Paul's Cathedral, 
according to the designs, and under the care and 
conduct of Wren, in lieu of those burnt and 
demolished by the great fire of 1666.'^ While 

1 Ans7ver to the Cathedral Commissioners, 171 7; Cunningham's 
Life of Sir Christopher Wren, in liis Lives of British Painters and 
Architects. 

2 The reader of the Spectator (No. 383) will recollect Sir Roger 
de Coverley's observation during his voyage from the Temple 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 15 

acknowledging the excellence, architecturally and 
constructively, of St. Paul's and its dome, it may be 
questioned whether Sir Christopher has been so Wren's 

stecDles. 

perfectly successful in his lesser churches and steeples. 
If he has not been so successful, this may be in part 
owing to the difficulty of reconciling the conditions 
of the classical style to the sites of the churches, 
dictated as these generally were by views of expe- 
diency, and to the requirements of Protestant places 
of worship in the matter of galleries and pews. 
The renaissance steeples of Wren — and indeed of all 
architects working in that manner — would seem to 
be inconsistent also with the modification of classical 
architecture known as Palladian ; and they neces- 
sarily transgress the first principles of a style of 
architecture, of which the horizontal line, as distin- 
guished from the vertical aspiring line, is a leading 
rule. If his mode of raising a steeple by piling- 
little ordered storeys one above another could be 
approved of, the steeple of Bow would certainly 
command our admiration as very perfect in its kind. 
Among Wren's other works may be noted the 
Library of Trinity College, Cambridge ; Greenwich 
Hospital, Hampton Court, the London Monument 
column. Temple Bar, and the western towers of the 
Abbey of Westminster. In the last of these, his 
ignorance of, or inattention to, Gothic detail is very 
conspicuous. 



Stairs to Vauxhall — how thick the City was set with churches, and 
that there was scarce a steeple to the west of Temple Bar : ' A most 
heathenish sight,' said Sir Roger, ' there is no religion at this end 
of the town ; the fifty new churches will very much mend the 
prospect, but church work is slow, church work is slow.' 



1 6 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART 

Sir Christopher Wren survived the accession of 
George I. eight years. It is sad to reflect that his 
last years were embittered by paltry disputes with 
the Cathedral Commissioners, and that in 1 718 his 
patent for the office of Surveyor of the Royal Build- 
ings was harshly superseded ; and this in the eighty- 
sixth year of his age, after more than fifty years of 
active and laborious exertion on behalf of the Crown 
and the public ; ' at which time,' says Sir Chris- 
topher's son, with almost pathetic simplicity, ' his 
merit and labours were not remembered by some.' ^ 
One Benson, an architect of no great ability, but a 
court favourite, was installed in his place. Pope's 
apostrophe to his first 'Dunciad' hero, Tibbald 
(Theobald), commemorating Wren and Benson and 
some of their contemporaries, is not a flattering 
picture of the time, in so far as regards the en- 
couragement of art and literature : — 

This, this is he foretold by ancient rhymes, 

The Augustus born to bring Saturnian times : 

Beneath his reign shall Eusden wear the bays, 

Gibber preside Lord Chancellor of plays, 

Benson sole judge of architecture sit, 

And Ambrose Phillips be preferred for wit ; 

See under Ripley rise a new Whitehall, 

And Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall ; 

While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends. 

Gay dies unpensioned with an hundred friends ; 

Hibernian politics, O Swift, thy fate, 

And Pope's, whole years to comment and translate.^ 



1 Wren's Parent alia (1750). 

2 Dujiciad, book iii. (edition of 1728). The lines cited in the 
text are varied in the later editions. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 1 7 



///. PAINTING. 

The rise of Painting as an art, in England, may be 
considered to date from the reign of George II. ; the 
British school commencing with William Hogarth, 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Richard Wilson. Each 
of these differed from the other in the branch of the 
art he followed and the measure of success he 
attained ; but all agreed in one important particular, 
that they struck out paths for themselves, and drew 
their inspiration, each in his own way, from the 
great fountain of nature. In art, it has been said, 
there are two modes by which men arrive at distinc- Two 
tion. In the one, by a careful application to what ^^rsuing 
others have accomplished, the artist imitates their ^^^• 
works, or selects and combines their various beau- 
ties ; in the other, he seeks excellence at Its primitive 
source — nature. In the first, he forms a style from 
the study of pictures, and produces imitative, scho- 
lastic, or eclectic art ; in the second, by an immediate 
reference to nature, he discovers innumerable mate- 
rials for study, hitherto unexplored, and by pour- 
tray Ing these he forms a style which is original.^ 

This observation, applicable to painting In all its state of 
branches, is aptly Illustrated (In its first head) by f^ gn^f 
the condition of the art in Engfland in the early part ^^^^ ^^ 

^ ^ ^ ^ -' ^ early por- 

of the 1 8th century. H Istorical painting was repre- tion of 
sented on staircases, halls, and ceilings, by the century. 
florid allegories of Verrio, La Guerre, and Sir James 

^ Introduction to Constable's English laiidscape. First 
Edition. 



lo VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 

Thornhill, In a manner derived from Rubens and 
the foreign masters : — 

At painted ceilings you devoutly stare, 

Where sprawl the saints of Verrio and La Guerre, 

Or gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, 

And bring all paradise before your eye.^ 

Landscapes by native artists were very little in 
demand ; and when painted at all, were for the most 
part poorly executed imitations of Poussin and 
Claude. The titled and wealthy of the land, while 
seeking paintings and works of art in Italy, were 
content to believe the assertions of the Abbe du Bos, 
that heaven had set a bar to the exercise of the 
aesthetic arts in England, by giving her a dull humid 
climate and her people a genius turned solely to 
useful arts and trade.^ 

So Mr. Addison, In his poetical epistle addressed 
to Lord Halifax, from Italy, though taking a more 
elevated view of the vocation of Britain in Europe, 
all but denies her capacity for excelling in architec- 
ture, painting, or sculpture : — 

Others with towering piles may please the sight, 
And in their proud aspiring domes delight ; 
A nicer touch to the stretched canvas give, 
Or teach their animated rocks to live : 
'Tis Britain's care to watch o'er Europe's fate, 
And hold in balance each contending state ; 
To threaten bold presumptuous kings with war, 
And answer her afflicted neighbours' prayer.^ 

^ Pope's Epistle to the Earl of Burlingtoii. 

2 Abbe du Bos, Reflexions sur la Peintiire, la Foesie, et la Mii- 
siqiie. English translation, 1748. Part ii. ch. 13. 

3 The last part of this passage has reference to tlie foreign 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 1 9 

Portrait was the only branch of the art of painting Portrait- 
practised in England to any extent, and that in a Er^orTo^ 
very mannered and mechanical fashion.^ British ^'S^ ^^ 

•' George 

portrait painting has this peculiarity in its history, ii- 
that, from the reign of Henry VIII. to the death of 
Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1723, the principal practice 
of the art was in the hands of foreigners ; Holbein, 
Jansen, Mytens, Rubens, Vandyke, Lely, and 
Kneller, being the painters to whom, along with a 
very few native artists, we are indebted for a series 
of British portraits historically interesting, though of 
varying merit as works of art. Of the sovereigns 
in whose reigns the foreign artists flourished, and by 
whom they were usually invited to transfer their 
residence to this country, Charles I., by his muni- 
ficence and cultivated taste, was the greatest pro- 
moter of art ; and it was through his encouragement, 
and the patronage of the nobility and gentry, that 
the portraiture and style of Vandyke obtained its 
footing in England. Any native talent that appeared 
was almost entirely in the department of water- 
colour miniatures — Hillyard, in the reign of Eliza- 
beth, and in succession to him the two Olivers and 
Samuel Cooper, being the most distinguished in 
that line. Of native painters of life-sized portraits 
in oil, William Dobson, George Jamieson, a Scotch 

policy of King William III. The whole passage is imitated from 
the lines in the Sixth Book of the yEjieid, beginning — 
Excudent alii spirantia mollius jera, &c. 

1 Edwards' Anecdotes of Painters, 1808 ; Pye's Patronage of 
British Art. 

c 2 



succes- 



20 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. 

artist and pupil of Rubens, and William Wissing, 
were perhaps the best. 
Lelyand The portraits of Lely, and still more those of 
amf their Kneller, however admired and praised by their con- 
temporaries, show a decided falling off from the 
portraits of Vandyke. In the great proportion of 
their pictures, affectation in attitude and a false 
style of embellishment — and, in the female portraits 
of Lely, a voluptuous air — take the place of natural 
dignity and grace. In the portraits of both there is 
a want of expression in the faces, and generally of 
individuality in the persons, which, coupled with the 
great popularity of the painters, must have had a 
baneful effect on their followers and imitators. 
After the death of Kneller, a style of painting still 
more mannered than his own prevailed among his 
English successors, Jervas, Jonathan Richardson, 
and Hudson.^ These, and the Frenchman Vanloo, 
were the portrait painters most in vogue prior to the 
middle of the i8th century, when Reynolds first 
began to emerge into notice ; the portraits by them 
being at the present day valued more on account of 
the personal or public interest of the subjects, than 
of their merit as pictures. 

Among the portrait painters of this time was 
Allan Ramsay, who, without possessing the genius 
of his father, the pastoral poet, produced what 



^ That Mr. Pope was a very painstaking, .though not equally 
successful pupil of Jervas in the art of portrait painting, appears 
from an amusing letter to Mr. Gay, August 23, 17 13. In his later 
life, Pope's letters show him to have been a friend and patron of 
Richardson. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 2 1 

Horace Walpole called ' honest similitudes,' not 
very interesting, but unaffected and vigorously 
painted. Ramsay lived for upwards of twenty 
years after the accession of George III., and 
(assisted by his pupil, Reinagle) painted many por- 
traits of his Majesty and Queen Charlotte in 
their robes of state, for ambassadors and foreign 
courts. His pictures were respectable, but not to be 
compared with those of Reynolds, whom we shall 
remark in a subsequent chapter as the main founder 
of the British school of painting. 



IV. SCULPTURE. 



If Painting can scarcely be said to have existed in 
Britain as an art of native growth till nearly the 
middle of the 1 8th century, as regards Sculpture the 
case was still more crying. In the old cathedrals 
of Wells, Lincoln, and Peterborough, in King Henry 
the Seventh's chapel at Westminster, and else- 
where, good examples existed of early sculpture, 
chiefly in connection with architecture ; and through- 
out the United Kingdom a number of sepulchral 
monuments were to be seen, mostly the work of 
renaissance sculptors, Italian, Flemish, French or 
British. But prior to the middle of last century 
sculpture was not a living art practised in Britain 
by native artists ; while of the foreign artists who 
practised in England, none, with the exception of 
Roubillac, were of any merit. Of this defective state Defective 
of sculpture, even in the reign of Charles L, who ^^"^^^'°" 



*f' 



22 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART 

of British eiicouraged and employed artists of all kinds, the 
scup me. ^gii_a^y|-}^gnticated instance may be given, that when 
on one occasion the king's bust was required to be 
done, this could only be accomplished by Vandyke 
being engaged to paint three views of his face, which 
were sent to Bernini at Rome, by whom the bust 
was executed in marble.^ 

The foreign sculptors who found their way to 
England were Gibber, Scheemaker, Rysbrach, and 
Roubillac.^ They brought with them from the 
continent the degenerate taste in sculpture then pre- 
vailing in Europe, the chief blame of which is attri- 
butable to the Neapolitan sculptor Bernini, whose 
great talent and dexterity in his art extended and 
increased the influence of his faulty manner.^ Rou- 
billac, who was superior to the other foreigners, 
flourished in the reign of George II., and his works 

1 Flaxman's Address on the Death of Thomas Banks ^ 1805. Van- 
dyke's admirable painting of these three portrait-views — a front, a 
side, and a three-quarter — on one canvas, is now in her 
Majesty's collection. Sculpture appears not to have been in a 
more flourishing state in France about the same period, if we may 
judge from the fact of the painter Philip de Champagne having 
painted in a similar manner three portrait- views of the face of Car- 
dinal Richelieu for the Roman sculptor Mocchi to make a bust 
from, according to the inscription on the back of the picture, 
which is now in the British National Gallery. Cardinal Richelieu 
died in 1642. 

2 There must have been a sad want (according to Dr. Waagen) 
of native sculpture in England in the eighteenth century, to 
account for the employment of such artists as Scheemaker and 
Rysbrach, whose monuments in the Abbey he considers examples 
of the most complete dereliction of all the laws of plastic art. — Art 
Journal, 1855, p. 205. 

^ Flaxman's Address on the Death of T. Banks. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 23 

are well known ; two of the most celebrated — Sculpture 
the monument of John, Duke of Argyle, and Lady biliac^" 
Elizabeth Nightingale's monument, in which the 
skeleton form of Death is introduced — being in 
Westminster Abbey. The supplicating figure of 
Eloquence in the Argyle group has always been re- 
garded as a great work of art. Among his statues 
may be noted that of Sir Isaac Newton at Cam- 
bridge, and the statue of Shakespeare in the entrance 
hall of the British Museum, which belonged to 
Garrick, and although rather small in scale, is of 
an imaginative character. The statue of Presi- 
dent Forbes, in the Parliament House, Edinburgh, 
is also a good example of Roubillac's talent as a 
sculptor. These statues are remarkable for liveli- 
ness of expression ; the accessories displaying (as is 
usual in his work) great power over the material, 
though somewhat too laboured. 

' In this state,' says Mr. Flaxman (in his address 
on the death of the sculptor Thomas Banks), * the 
art continued until the establishment of the Royal study of 
Academy, in 1769 settled a course of study both at se"on^'^^ 
home and abroad, which developed the powers of [he^Royai 
English genius, till then unknown to the natives and Academy- 
denied by foreigners.' 

The institution of the Royal Academy was un- 
doubtedly of great consequence and use to the 
nascent sculpture of England ; but whether we are 
to attribute so very decidedly the rise and rapid 
growth of British sculpture to the cause so assigned 
may be questioned, as Nollekens, Banks, and Bacon, 
the only English sculptors of merit who preceded 



24 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 

Flaxman, had all acquired reputation by their models 
and works before the Academy was established at 
all.^ Bacon and Banks, indeed, were among the 
most distinguished of the early students of the 
Academy's classes, Banks being sent to Italy as 
travelling student. But Nollekens had been eight 
years studying in Rome when the Academy 
opened ; and he had executed for Lord Yarborough 
and others, at Rome, several considerable works in 
marble. 

There can be no hesitation, however, in admitting 
that the classes and course of study set" on foot by 
the Royal Academy were suggestive as well as 
instructive, and exercised an important influence 
on the progress of sculpture in England. 

^ At the date of the institution of the Royal Academy, Banks 
was thirty four years of age, Nollekens thirty-two, and Bacon 
twenty-nine. 



BOOK I. 



LITERATURE 



CHAPTER I. 

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 

English Historical Writing prior to 1754 — Hiune s History 
of England — Dr. Robertson's Historical Compositions 
— Gibbons ^Decline and Fall of tJie Roman Empire' — 
Later Historical Works — Biographical Literature in tJie 
Last and Present Centuries. 

I. HISTORY. 

Considering the solid and matter-of-fact qualities 
that are supposed to characterise the British mind, 
it is singular that before the time of Hume, Robert- 
son and Gibbon, there should have been so few 
native writers of history. Passing over Hollin- Early 
shed's Chronicles and the writings of Sir John Hay- histories 
ward in the reigns of Elizabeth and James L, Bacon's 
' History of Henry VH.' and the Historical Plays 
of Shakespeare are probably the best native histories 
of England extant prior to the reign of George H. 
Rapin's History, translated in that reign, was con- 
tinued by Tindal, and is a respectable work. 

• Of early English histories of foreign countries, 
Knolles' ' History of the Turks ' and Raleigh's 'His- 
tory of the World,' now more remarkable in a literary 
than an historical point of view, are the most deserv- 
ing of mention. Of domestic histories of particular 
periods by men of mark, who had themselves borne 



28 



V/EJV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 



a part in the transactions they relate, but whose 
narratives, however characteristic of the times and of 
the authors, are frequently coloured by their political 
opinions, there are Knox's ' History of the Refor- 
mation in Scotland,' Lord Clarendon's * History of 
the Civil War,' first published in 1702, and Bishop 
Burnet's ' History of the Reformation in England ' 
and ' History of his Own Time.' The last of these 
appeared in 1723, after Burnet's decease — a repertory, 
more or less reliable, of historical facts and his own 
opinions. It did not escape the satire of Pope, who, 
in the ' Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this Parish,' has 
amusingly ridiculed the bishop's loquacious import- 
ance and undistinguishing industry in the collection 
of facts. ^ 
1736. Lord Bolingbroke's ' Letters on the Study of 

Lord History,' including an introductory sketch of the 
brokel^ State and history of Europe, from the treaty of the 

Letters Pyrenees to the year 1688, is one of the few bis- 
on the -^ . ^ 
study of torical books of the early part of the i8th century, 

^' and is remarkable for its condensed narrative and 

philosophical views. Whatever may be thought of 

the principles in politics, and still more in religion, 

of Henry St. John, his matter and style, when the 

subject is clear of personal and polemical bias, rise 

far above the other historical writings of the day. 

History has been said to be ' Philosophy teaching 



* In a paper on Historical writing in the Rambler^ of date 
1 75 1, Dr. Johnson, admitting the scarcity of good Enghsh his- 
torians, refers particularly to Raleigh, Knolles, and Clarendon ; 
giving the preference in point of style to Knolles' History of the 
Turks, 



CHAP. I.] HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 29 

by examples.' In the following passage from the 
fifth of his ' Letters on History,' this thought is ex- 
panded by Bolingbroke, and in his historical writings 
the theory of composition involved in it is attempted 
to be reduced to practice : — 

By comparing in this study the experience of other 
men and other ages with our own, we improve both ; we 
analyse, as it were, philosophy. We reduce all the abstract 
speculations of ethics, and all the general rules of human 
policy, to their first principles. 

In 1754, three years after the death of Lord 
Bolingbroke, David Hume, then librarian to the 
Faculty of Advocates, brought out at Edinburgh a 
volume, in quarto, of his History of England, con- Hume's 
taining the reigns of James I. and Charles I. Mr. of Eng 
Hume was already known, both in this country and in ^^^^' 
France, by his treatises on metaphysical, moral, and 
political subjects ; being regarded by the discerning 
few as a most subtle thinker upon all subjects, and in 
matter of religion as a daring sceptic. The first of 
these treatises appeared in 1738, although none of 
them, except the ' Political Discourses,' attained 
much contemporary popularity. The History was 
at first unfavourably received by all parties, and In 
a year not above forty-five copies of it were sold. 
In 1756 a second volume, containing the period from 
the death of Charles I. till the Revolution, came out 
in London, and was better received. In the follow- 
ing years the remaining volumes appeared, and the 
sale of the whole in a short time made such advances 1759- 
that (in the author's own w^ords) the copy-money 



30 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

given him by the booksellers much exceeded any- 
thing formerly known in England.^ 
Hume's At the time of the appearance of Hume's His- 
pohtics. ^Qj.y^ party spirit in England ran high ; and the 
political principles of the book excited more atten- 
tion than its literary merits.^ From a perusal of his 
political essays we naturally set down Mr. Hume 
as a moderate Whig — a friend to limited monarchy 
and the Protestant succession.^ There is, however, 
in his speculative writings, a great deal of what may 
be called political see-saw, and neither party can 
decidedly claim him. In one of his letters he says 
of himself : 'My views of things are more con- 
formable to Whig principles, my representations of 
persons to Tory prejudices.' It must be admitted 
that, with all his profession of impartiality, when he 
comes to deal with men and events instead of ab- 
stract speculations, there is a certain leaning to the 
Tory side. But that such a tendency was the cause 
of certain inaccuracies and inconsistent views which 
writers since his own day have discovered in his 
History of England, it would be hazardous to 

1 Hume's Autobiography. It is worthy of remark that in this 
very year, 1759, when Mr. Hume was thus making way in his 
literary career, Dr. Johnson, after twenty-two years of a literary 
life — in the course of which he had written the Rambler, the poems 
oi London and the Vanity of ILujnan Wishes, SiYid the Dictionary — 
had to borrow money to defray the expense of his mother's funeral, 
and wrote Rasselas in a week (receiving for it 125/.), to discharge 
this and other debts. — Boswell's Life of Johnson. 

2 Life and Correspondence of David Lliime, by J. H. Burton, 
LL.D. 

3 See particularly Hume's Essays On Parties in Great Britain, 
and On the F?'otestant Succession. 



CHAP I.] HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 3 1 

assert, considering that they may equally, and, from 
the character of the man, more probably, have arisen 
from occasional carelessness and an indolent defect 
of research, or from the want of information which 
later publications have made accessible. How- 
ever this may be, the literary merit and general Charac- 
excellenceof Mr. Hume's History came very soon to history.'^ 
be acknowledged ; and it remains to this day a 
standard work. In a comprehensive view of his 
subject, in perspicuity of narrative, breadth of de- \ 
scription, and tolerant feeling, Hume, as a historian, 
stands unrivalled. * His story,' to use the words of 
Lord Brougham, ' is unbroken, clear; all its parts dis- 
tinct, and all succeeding in natural order ; nor is any V 
reflection omitted where it should occur, or introduced 
where it would encumber or interrupt.'^ The language 
is exact, easy and effective, though with some ten- 
dency both to Scotticisms and gallicisms. The work 
of Hume has the additional merit of not confining 
itself to wars, successions, and treaties — till then the 
staple material of history — but of directing attention 
to manners, commerce, and laws, and to the progress 
of the people in whatever concerns their civilization. 

The ' History of Scotland,' by Dr. William Dr. 
Robertson, a Presbyterian clergyman, and Principal ^^^^ 
of the University of Edinbure^h, became a popular historical 

^ ^ ' r r composi- 

work immediately on its appearance in 1759.^ Horace tions. 

' Lives of Men of Letters and Science^ Time of George LIT. 

^ For the copyright of this work Dr. Robertson received from 
Millar of London 600/. The colleague of Dr. Robertson in the 
Greyfriars' Church of Edinburgh, and his opponent in the General 
Assembly of the Scottish Kirk, was Dr. John Erskine, whose life 



32 VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

Their fa- Walpole praised its purity of style and great im- 
mif^^^ partiality.^ Mr. Strahan, the bookseller, wrote to 
tion. Y)r. Robertson that people of the first distinction 

wondered how a Scotch parson could write so well ; 
the Speaker of the House of Commons in particular 
preferring the style to that of Lord Bolingbroke.^ 
Ten years afterwards Robertson's ' History of the 
Reign of the Emperor Charles V., with a view of the 
progress of society in Europe from the subversion of 
the Roman Empire to the beginning of the i6th 
century/ was published in three volumes quarto, 
the author receiving for his copyright 4,500/. This 
history, from the general interest attaching to the 
subject, created for Robertson a European name. 
Commencing with the able preliminary dissertation, 
and uniting with consummate skill in a central point 
the various threads of European history, it is usually 
regarded as his masterpiece.^ The ' History of 



has been written by the late Sir Henry MoncreifF. Dr. Erskine 
was the clergyman whose sermon, the reader of Sir Walter Scott's 
novels will recollect, Colonel Mannering and Mr. Pleydell had 
the benefit of listening to, when they went on a Sunday morning 
to hear the celebrated historian. — Guy Manneriiig, vol. ii. 

^ Letter to Sir David Dalrympk, 1759. 

2 Life of Dr. Robertson, by Professor Dugald Stewart. 

^ The portion of the life of Charles V. after his retirement 
from the throne to the monastery of San Geronimo de Yuste, par- 
ticularly the highly- wrought passage relating the celebration by 
the Emperor in his lifetime of his funeral obsequies, is liable to 
observation oi) the score of a somewhat superficial attention to 
authorities, more so than in the previous part of the history. The 
Cloister Life of the Empej'or Charles V. forms the subject of an 
interesting volume (1852) by Sir William Stirling Maxwell, Bart., 
composed from authentic Spanish sources. 



CHAP. I.] HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHl . 33 

America/ the materials for which were too exten- 
sive to be included in the ' History of Charles V.,' as 
originally intended, appeared in 1776. In the follow- 
ing year Dr. Robertson was elected a member of the 
Royal Academy of History at Madrid, in testimony 
of their approbation of the industry and care with 
which he had applied to the study of Spanish 
history. The Academy at the same time appointed 
one of its members to translate the ' History of 
America ' into Spanish — an undertaking which was 
stopped by the Spanish government judging it in- 
expedient that a work should be made public in 
which the nature of their trade with America and 
system of colonial administration were so fully ex- 
plained.-^ 

In all Dr. Robertson's works the composition is Robert- 
highly finished, occasionally perhaps too much so, style; not 
and the parts of his subject are thoroughly disen- \^^^^~ 
tangled. The narrative is clear and interesting, 
though to the careful student material passages of 
history may sometimes appear to be given without 
sufficient particularity. The diction is beautiful and 
vigorous ; at the same time, no doubt owing to the 
author's Scottish education and life, not having the 
merit (if it is a merit) of being idiomatic. If he 
attempted or v/ished it, Robertson did not in any 
of his histories attain the idiomatic English of the 
two models of a good narrative style he was in the 
habit of recommending — Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe' 
and Swift's ' Gulliver's Travels.' 

^ Stewart's Life of Robertson, 
D 



34 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book T. 

The peculiar styles of Hume and Robertson are 
thus characterised by Mr. Gibbon, in his autobio- 
graphy :— 

The old reproach that no British altars had been raised to 
the muse of History was recently disproved by the first per- 
formances of Robertson and Hume, the historians of Scot- 
land and of the Stuarts. . . The perfect composition, 
the nervous language, the well-turned periods of Dr. 
Robertson, inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might 
one day tread in his footsteps ; the calm philosophy, the 
careless inimitable beauties, of his friend and rival often 
forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of 
delight and despair. 

Gibbon's The first volume of the ' History of the Decline 
and Fall ^^d Fall of the Roman Empire' appeared in 1776, 
Roman ^^ quarto, which, in the i8th century and the begin- 
Empire. ning of the 19th, was the usual form of publication 
for books of any pretension. The idea of writing 
on this magnificent subject had originally occurred 
to Mr. Gibbon at Rome, many years before, as he 
sat ' musing amid the ruins of the capitol, while the 
bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple 
of Jupiter.'^ He brought to aid him in the task he 
had set himself great industry of research, a com- 
prehensive grasp of his subject, a vivid imagination, 
and a vast store of historical reading and curious 
learning. A man of fashion as well as a man of 
letters, with an education and training of a very 
desultory character, he had passed much time on 
the continent, and his opinions in religion, his per- 
sonal habits, and even his language, had in the 

^ Now the Church of the Ara Coeli. 



CHAP. I.] HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 35 

earlier part of his life been cast in a French mould. 
When the 'Decline and Fall' first saw the light, 
Mr. Gibbon, at that time member for Liskeard, 
was residing in London ; and very soon (to use 
his own language) his book was on every table 
and almost on every toilette. The historian was 
crowned by the taste and fashion of the day. The 
copiousness and interest of the narrative, the ad- 
mirable grouping of the subject, the perspicuous 
and ornate though laboured style, were acknow- 
ledged by all. But passing from the manner to the 
matter, the attention of the more serious class of 
readers became very soon directed to the sneering its covert 
and covert attack on the Christian revelation con- ^hnV °^ 
tained in the 15th and i6th chapters. Although as tianity. 
much a sceptic as Hume, Gibbon was less cautious 
in his attacks on Christianity, and had less outward ,^ilAMif^'{/ 
regard to established opinions. Setting aside the 
hits at churchmen which Mr. Hume cannot refrain 
from indulging in, there is hardly anything in his 
history that touches the fundamental doctrines of 
religion. In the ' Decline and Fall,' on the other 
hand, when the rise and rapid growth of the Chris- 
tian religion comes to be treated of, not only (it was 
generally remarked) is undue prominence given to 
secondary causes, but the direct evidence in its 
favour is either altogether ignored or referred to 
with a sneer ; — 

Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer. 

As might have been expected, these chapters 
(with which the first volume closed) raised up a host 

D 2 • 



36 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

of controversial opponents, for all of whom, with one 
or two exceptions, the historian rather arrogantly 
expressed his contempt. The second and third 
volumes of the history appeared five years after. 
Composed with equal care and more caution, they 
excited as much attention and less controversy than 
the first volume. 

On the break up of the Coalition Ministry, under 
which Mr. Gibbon held an office, he went to reside 
permanently at Lausanne, on the Lake of Geneva ; 
being induced to do so from motives of economy as 
well as inclination. He there completed the ' His- 
tory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'^ 
1788. The three last volumes were brought out in London, 
the author superintending their publication while 
on a visit to his friend Lord Sheffield. 

^ It is not to be wondered at that the abodes of Gibbon and 
Voltaire awoke a reflection in the Childe Harold of Byron : — 

Lausanne and Ferney ! ye have been the abodes 

Of names which unto you bequeathed a name, 

Mortals who sought and found by dangerous roads 

A path to perpetuity of fame : 

They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim 

Was, Titan -like, on daring doubts to pile 

Thoughts which should call down thunder and the flame 

Of Heaven again assailed — if Heaven the while 

On man and man's research could deign do more than smile. 

In the well-known passage of Gibbon's Autobiography, where, 
in beautiful but somewhat affected language, the writing in the 
summer-house of the garden at Lausanne of the last page of the 
History of the Decline a7id Fall is recorded, a fact is mentioned, 
curious in itself when the elaborate style of his composition is 
borne in mind — that his first rough manuscript, without any inter- 
mediate copy, had invariably been sent to press. Another passage 
in the Autobiography, referring to his practice of composition, ex- 
plains this : ' It has always been my practice to cast a long para- 



CHAP. I.] HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 37 

Having previously referred to Mr. Gibbon's opi- 
nion of the styles of Robertson and Hume, Dr. 
Robertson's remarks on the ' Decline and Fall' 
may now be cited, from two letters to the author 
preserved in the 'Autobiographical Memoirs' of 
Gibbon: — 

I like the style of these volumes (2nd and 3rd) better May, 
than that of the first ; there is the same beauty, richness ^^Si. 
and perspicuity of language, and with less of that quaint- 
ness into which your admiration of Tacitus sometimes 
seduced you. 

And of the last three volumes he writes: — 

I ventured to predict the superior excellence of the July, 
volumes lately published, and I have not been a false ^788. 
prophet. ... I know no example in any age or nation of 
such a vast body of elegant and valuable information com- 
municated by one individual. . . Your style appears to 
me improved in these new volumes ; by the habit of 
writing, you write with greater ease.^ 

Besides the works of the three historians that Later 
have now been mentioned, the latter half of the i8th works of 
century produced a variety of other historical works ; century 
but none of such merit, in a literary point of view, 
as to raise them to an equal rank with Hume, 
Robertson, and Gibbon. Smollett's ' Continuation 
of Hume's History' — a trade speculation, hastily ^ 



graph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my 
memory ; but I suspend the action of the pen till I have given 
the last pohsh to my work.' 

^ It may be remarked as a symptom of the latitudinarianism, or 
perhaps liberality, of the time, how cautiously tolerant, in his pub- 
lished letters, Dr. Robertson is of his sceptical and sneering friend. 



3^ V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART [book i. 

/ written, and mostly compiled from newspapers — was 

! unworthy of the book to which it was tacked, and 

did not add to the literary reputation of the author 

of ' Humphrey Clinker.' George lord Lyttelton's 

1767. ' History of King Henry H.' is a lengthy work, of 
much research with reference to a fundamental 
period of English constitutional history ; his lord- 
ship having been engaged for thirty years in writing 
it. The principal historical work of James Macpher- 
son (the compiler, or, as some will have it, author of 
Ossian's poems) is the ' History of Great Britain, 
from the Restoration to the Accession of the House 
of Hanover,' containing information of interest with 
reference to proceedings in connection with the 

1771- Jacobite party. Henry's 'History of Great Britain,' 

1793' 

coming down to the death of Henry VHI., is written 
on the plan of giving simultaneously in each book a 
history of events civil and military, and of the state 
of religion, laws, learning, arts, commerce, and man- 
ners. Dr. Adam Ferguson's ' History of the Roman 
1783- Republic' is a work of erudite scholarship, according 
to the lights of his time, and of original thinking. 
The ' Annals of Scotland, from the accession of Mal- 
colm HI. to the accession of the House of Stewart,' 
by Sir David Dalrymple (Lord Hailes), is praised 
by Dr. Johnson for ' stability of dates, certainty of 
facts, and punctuality of citation.' ' I never before,' 
he adds, ' read Scotch history with certainty.'^ 

Other historical writings of this period may be 
named, of greater or less merit ; Dr. Goldsmith's His- 

• Boswell's Life, iii. 54. 



CHAP. I.] HISTORY AXD BIOGRAPHY. 39 

tories of Greece and Rome, written for the general 
reader, but always with Goldsmith's adorning touch ; 
Ty tier's ' Outlines of Universal History ;' Pinkerton's 
w^orks on Scottish History ; Leland's ' History of 
Ireland;' Gillies' 'History of Greece;' Watson's 
'Philip n. and Philip HI. of Spain,' in continuation of 
Robertson's ' History of Charles V. ; ' Orme's ' His- 
tory of Transactions in Hindostan ; ' and the ' History 
of the Rebellion of 1745,' by John Home, the author 
of ' Douglas,' the chief interest of which, as com- 
pared with later works, consists in Home having 
been engaged in the contest as a volunteer on the 
side of the government. 

Coming to the present century, Mr. Fox's frag- Histori- 
mentary ' History of the Reign of James H.' with an Qf\gj.^^^ 
introductory chapter by his nephew, Lord Holland, century. 
appeared in 1808. Sharon Turner's Histories of the 
Anglo-Saxons and of England are replete with learn- 1808- 
ing and research. Lingard's ' History of England,' 
from a Roman Catholic stand-point, contains a fund 
of new information and acute suggestion, conveyed 
in a perspicuous style, and has deservedly attained a 1818. 
high reputation. Hallam's ' View of the State of 
Europe during the Middle Ages,' and his 'Constitu- 1827. 
tional History of England from Henry VH. to 
George H.' are both of them valuable contributions 
to history in their respective departments — books of 
great research and imipartial investigation, stamped 
with the impress of an accomplished and vigorous 
mind. Sir John Malcolm's ' History of Persia' is also 
a valuable work. Mr. Southey's ' History of Brazil ' 
is a book containing much information not to be had 



40 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

elsewhere. The ' History of the Peninsular War/ by 
the same author, is now to a great extent superseded 
by the more authoritative and scientific ' History of 
the War in the Peninsula and the South of France, 
from 1807 to 18 14,' by Sir William Napier. The 

* History of the Progress and Suppression of the 
Reformation in Italy and in Spain,' by Dr. Thomas 

/ McCrie, a Presbyterian clergyman, are noteworthy 
and Interesting additions to general as well as to 
ecclesiastical history. The first, which is the most 
^ careful composition, was translated on the continent; 
the Italian version being placed, in 1836, by Pope 
Gregory XVI. in the Index of prohibited books. 
Adolphus' 'History of the Reign of George III.,' 
Brodle's work on English history, Sir Walter Scott's 

* History of Scotland,' contained in the three series of 
'Tales of a Grandfather,' are also contributions, more 
or less valuable, to our stock of historical knowledge. 

Alison's The 'History of Europe durlngf the French Revo- 

' History . . . . 

of Europe lutlon,' by Sir Archibald Alison, the first two volumes 
the^"^ of which appeared in 1833, is, upon the whole an 
French ^]^|g ^^^ (with the help of an Index) useful book, 
tion.' though somewhat verbose. Inflated, and careless in 
style. In the earlier portion of the work the 
chapters frequently start with a political or moral 
aphorism, as to the truth or at least the application 
of which there may be great difference of opinion. 
From Its complicated subject-matter embracing 
several streams of narrative, the grouping and ar- 
rangement in chapters of the various materials of the 
history was a difficult task, and has not been always 
successfully accomplished. Alison's ' History of 



CHAP. I.] HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 4 1 

Europe, from the Peace of 1815/ is not equal to its 
predecessor. The subject of the later work lay too 
much in his own time, and its mode of dealing with 
recent productions of literature is far from satisfac- 
tory. Perhaps the most brilliant addition to the 
historical literature of the present century has been 
Lord Macaulay's ' History of England from the Macau- 
Accession of James II.,' the first two volumes of j^nd"^"' 
which appeared in 1849. The introductory part, 
occupying the first volume, consists of a comprehen- 
sive and eloquent resume of English history, em- 
bracing not merely a general account of events, but 
a masterly though sketchy view of the various 
changes in the constitution, religion, laws, commerce, 
and manners of Great Britain and Ireland. The 
more regularly narrative part of the work traces and 
delineates in a series of chapters or historical essays 
the leading transactions of the reigns of James II. 
and of William III., who is Lord Macaulay's hero 
of British history. Readers of history will prob- 
ably desiderate in the work of Macaulay greater 
exactness in the statement of facts and a more full 
and scrupulous reference to dates. However inter- 
esting and agreeable to read, his book may be 
thought to affect occasionally a greater familiarity 
with bygone persons and events than will stand a 
strict verification, and also to show too much ten- 
dency to partial views, and to generalising upon 
insufficient data. The fifth and last volume was 
published posthumously, in i86r, by the author's 
sister. Lady Trevelyan. There is a want of com- 
pleteness in the concluding portion of the history of 



42 VI£IV OF LITERATURE AND ART [book i. 

the reign of King William which is now supplied by 
the volume of Earl Stanhope's 'History of England, 
from 1701 to 1 71 3.' This volume comprises the 
reign of Queen Anne and forms a connecting link 
between the close of Lord Macaulay's History and 
the commencement of Lord Stanhope's ' History of 
England, from the Treaty of Utrecht to the Peace of 
Versailles in 1783.' 



//. BIOGRAPHY. 



Akin to History, though of simpler structure, in so 
far as regards the putting together of its materials, 
is Biography. ' There is a history,' according to 
Shakespeare, ' in all men's lives,' although there are 
comparatively few lives of which the world cares to 
hear the story, or from which inferences generally 
applicable can be drawn. 
Biogra- In the first portion of the period to which this 

writings historical view refers, one of the few biographies 
1 8th worthy of note is Dr. Conyers Middleton's 'Life of 

century. Cicero,' composed mostly from Cicero's Epistles, and 
combining with the biographical narrative valuable 
passages of Roman history. The ' Life of Savage ' 
by Dr. Johnson appeared in 1744, and is a story of 
melancholy interest. The ' Life of Sir Thomas 
Brown ' written by the same author, and prefixed 
1756. to an edition of the ' Christian Morals ; ' the ' Life 
of Frederick the Great' in the 'Literary Magazine,' 
and the ' Life of Roger Ascham,' prefixed to an 
1 761. edition of his works, are examples of shorter bio- 
graphies in Johnson's vigorous and rounded style. 



CHAP. I.] HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 43 

The brief autobiography of David Hume, entitled 
* My own Life/ is a model of terse and easy writing, 
giving to the public as much information about 
himself and his works as he wished should be given, 
and not a word more. The autobiographical ' Me- 
moirs of Gibbon,' edited with notes by Lord Shef- 
field after the author's decease, is a much longer 
and more entertaining work. It records, in an easy 
though still ornate style, the history of his writings, 
various portions of his life, and some of his opinions 
on public institutions and points of criticism. 

Dr. Johnson's ' Lives of the Poets,' although Lives of 

T ^ . . . r ' r • 1 the Poets. 

sometimes detective m point oi iniormation. and 
not unfrequently coloured by his own prejudices, has 
always been regarded as an excellent work, as well 
in its style — which is less laboured than that of 
his previous writings — as in the interest of the nar- 
ratives and the learning and vigour of the criticism. 
One may not always agree with the judgments pro- 
nounced, and may think some portion of the writing 
thrown away upon very inferior poets ; but the book 
will be read, notwithstanding, with pleasure and 
instruction. Boswell's ' Life of Johnson ' takes its Bosweirs 
place in English literature, not as an ornate compo- 
sition, but as a truthful record of the life of a re- 
markable man, and of his amusing and forcible talk. 
However the author himself may occasionally 
provoke a smile, his faithful and careful mode of 
dealing with his subject renders this biography a 
work of art of its own kind. The influence exer- 
cised by Pope, in a former age of literature, is but 
a faint type of the dictatorial power displayed 



Johnson. 



44 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK I. 

by Johnson among his Hterary friends in the pages 
of Boswell ; although it may be admitted that the 
sentiments and opinions of the sage are occasionally 
indebted for their force and effect to the strength 
of the language in which they are clothed as much 
as to their originality. 
Roscoe's The historical lives of Lorenzo de Medici and 
de Medici of Leo the Tenth, by Mr. Roscoe, display a com- 
^ ^° bination, not often seen, of diligent research, graceful 
style, and elegant taste. As biographies, they gave 
a new lustre to that department of British literature, 
and were received with applause both at home and 
1796. abroad. On the appearance of the ' Life of Lorenzo,' 
Dr. Parr complimented the author as having ' thrown 
the clearest and fullest light upon a period most 
interesting to every scholar ' — that of the revival of 
learning and the recovery of the classical models in 
literature and art ; while Thomas John Mathlas, a 
ripe Italian scholar, and author of the ' Pursuits of 
Literature,' praised him in verse. ^ The ' Life and 
Pontificate of Leo the Tenth ' traverses the region 
of art as well as of church politics — two subjects on 
which there always will be difference of opinion. 
It was neither so favourably received, nor Is it con- 
sidered quite equal to the ' Life of Lorenzo.' A 
1813. biography of a different stamp, the ' Life of Nelson,' 
adm.Irable for its clear and succinct narrative, and the 
easy flow of its English style, is regarded as one of 
the best of Mr. Southey's prose writings. His 

^ Life of William Roscoe, by Henry Roscoe ; Pursuits of 
Literature^ p. 227. 



CHAP. I.] HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, 45 

' Life of Wesley ' is a book of much information on 
the rise and progress of INIethodism. Sir Walter 
Scott's Lives of Dryden and Swift, prefixed to his 
editions of their works, mix personal anecdote with 
sensible and well-informed criticism. His ' Life of 
Napoleon Bonaparte' is a biography of much in- 1S27. 
terest, and the story of an eventful time, composed 
in an agreeable narrative style, but deficient in his- 
torical accuracy. 

In recent biographical literature, Thomas Moore, Change 
by his ' Life of Lord Byron,' which is superior both ^ode of 
in matter and style to his Lives of Sheridan and J^^al" 
of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and John Gibson Lock- writing. 
hart, by his ' Life of Sir Walter Scott,' occupy a 
prominent position. These writers, as well as 
Currie in his ' Life of Burns,' and Hayley in his 
' Life of Cowper,' have adopted the method of intro- 
ducing in their biographies the letters and journals 
of the persons whose lives they record ; of which, 
perhaps, the earliest example is in Mason's Memoirs, 
in 1775, of the 'Life and Writings of Gray.' This 
mode of authorship, however calculated to set forth 
the life of the subject of the book in a satisfactory 
manner, and in its just colours, is inconsistent with 
the idea of a continuous original composition, such 
as are most of those previously mentioned, and also 
the ' Life of Burns,' by Mr. Lockhart, an earlier 
production than his Life of Scott. The original 
composition of the author of a Vv'ork like Moore's 
Life of Byron, miay contain very good narrative, 
or criticism, or anecdote ; but his writing is usually 
nothino; more than the connectinof link or links 



4^ VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

between the letters and diaries, and sometimes the 
original pieces, of the subjects of the biography. 
The author and his own portion of the composition 
play a subordinate part. Thus larger and more 
copious books are produced, but inferior biographical 
compositions. 

This method has been followed In the present cen- 
tury by some authors of great name ; while others have 
given examples of the shorter and (when economy 
of time is an object) more readable biographies. 
Lord Brougham's ' Lives of Men of Letters and 
Science in the time of George IIL', is regarded 
as among the best of his prose writings. Lord 
Campbell's ' Lives of the Lord Chancellors,' and of 
' The Chief Justices of England,' are sufficiently 
amusing ; but they are open to criticism in point of 
style and tone, and to be received with great caution 
as records of facts. 



CHAP. II.] FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE. 47 



CHAPTER 11. 

FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE. 

Commencement of modern English Fiction — Novels of 
Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett — ' Tris- 
tram Shandy ' of Sterne — Tales of Johnson and Gold- 
smith — Romance of 'Castle of Otrantol followed by the 
Romances of Mrs. Radcliffe and Clara Reeve, &c. — Novels 
of Miss Burney, of Henry Mackenzie, and others — of Miss 
Edgeworth — of Sir Walter Scott— of later writers of 
Fiction. 

That species of English prose composition which 
may be described generally as ' fictitious narrative/ 
and which is represented by the modern novel and 
romance, took its rise, In the reign of George I., with 
the fictions of Daniel Defoe. The mediaeval ro- English 
mances of chivalry had been succeeded by the heroic of 17th 
romances of the 1 7th century ; ponderous works, full ^^^^^^y- 
of conventional adventures, interminable intrigues, 
and metaphysical gallantry. Such were the ro- 
mances of ' Cleopatra,' * Cassandra,' ' Clelia,' the 
* Grand Cyrus,' and others, which were still read in 
the reign of the first George. Mr. Pope, in a letter 
to Martha Blount (about 1720), talks of his sending 
her the ' Grand Cyrus ' by the Reading coach ; and 
to these performances Dean Swift no doubt refers, 
when, relating the fire that broke out in the palace 
of Lilliput, he makes Gulliver remark that ' her im- 



4^ VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART, [book i. 

perial majesty's apartment was on fire by the care- 
lessness of a maid of honour, who fell asleep while 
she was reading a romance.' These folio romances 
have long since been consigned to the shelves of 
ancient libraries.^ 

Neither the short Italian ' Novella,' nor the still 
shorter and more licentious French ' Nouvelle,' ever 
took root in England ; though several of Shakes- 
peare's plays are founded on Italian novels, and they 
occasionally appear in other forms. The names, 
however, of Romance and Novel have been adopted 
to designate the prose tales of fiction of m^ore recent 
times.^ 
Fictions Defoe's principal fictions, varying as they did in 

Defoe.^^^ character and subject, took all of them the form of 
autobiographies. The first edition of ' Robinson 
Robinson Crusoe,' in octavo, 1719, sets it forth on the title-page 
as — ' The Life and strange surprising Adventures of 
Robinson Crusoe, of York, mariner, who lived eight- 
and-twenty years all alone in an uninhabited island on 
the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river 
Oroonoque, having been cast on shore by shipwreck 
vv^herein all the men perished but himself : with an 
account how he was at last as strangely delivered by 
pirates. Written by Himself London : printed by \V. 

^ The list of the ' Lady's Library,' in No. 37 of the Spectator 
(April 12, 171 1), includes five of the most noted of the old 
romances, 

2 In the notices of British works of fiction contained in this 
chapter, it is proposed to refer to those works only which have 
taken their place as standard productions, and duly represent the 
literature of fiction of the da}'. 



CHAP. II.] FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE. 49 

Taylor at the Ship in Paternoster Row.' The 
interest of this immortal story centres chiefly in 
Crusoe's residence on the desert island ; his ex- 
pedients and shifts, and the perils he there en- 
counters ; his feelings in solitude, and his adventures 
with the savages ; all related with a circumstantiality 
and resemblance to truth not to be surpassed. His 
voyages and travels elsewhere are also very na- 
turally told, with a constant reference to minute and 
apparently unimportant circumstances. 

The ' Memoirs of a Cavalier,' the ' Life and Other 
Piracies of Captain Singleton,' the ' Life and Ad- Defoe. 
ventures of Colonel Jack,' the ' Fortunes and Mis- 
fortunes of Moll Flanders,' are told also in the first 
person. In the three last the reader is introduced 
to roguery in all shapes, to ' sea-sharks and land- 
sharks,' such as occur in the picaroon Spanish tales. 
In the 'Memoirs of a Cavalier' what relates per- 
sonally to the supposed Cavalier is fictitious, but 
the events recorded, with greater or less historical 
accuracy, are incidents of the Thirty years' War in 
Germany, and of the English Civil War of Charles I. 
This entertaining work may possibly have given 
Sir Walter Scott the first hint of an historical novel ; 
Scott having thoroughly appreciated the merits of 
Defoe as a writer of fiction, and superintended an 
edition of his works. The ' Journal of the Plague 
Year, 1665, written by a Citizen who continued all 
the time in London,' is a fictitious narrative, based 
upon representations of thrilling facts, which Defoe 
had probably gathered from living persons or con- 
temporary broad-sheets. 

M 



50 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book I. 

Defoe's talent of ' lying like truth ' by clothing 
his fictions with probable circumstances was pos- 
sessed in a very full measure by the author of the 
Gulliver's ' Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver.' This unique 
rave s. pj-Qcluction of Dean Swift came before the London 
public seven years after ' Robinson Crusoe,' and is 
entitled to rank as a fictitious narrative of the first 
class, quite exclusive of its character as a political or 
general piece of satire. The book appeared without 
the author's name, and became immediately the con- 
versation of the whole town, being universally read 
Their cir- ' from the Cabinet Council to the nursery.'^ Gulliver, 
tia^ty^'^' -^^^^ ^^^ heroes of Defoe, relates his parentage and 
^^4 life on shore in a common-sense fashion so ex- 

serio- 

comic quisitely natural that the seaman may be excused 
who declared that he knew Captain Gulliver very 
well, but he lived at Wapping, not at Rotherhithe. 
The voyages to Lilliput, Brobdignag, and Laputa, 
and all the wonderful things he encountered in his 
travels, are told with so much gravity and regard to 
keeping and proportion, that, apart from the under- 
current of ridicule of Sir Robert Walpole, and of 
human nature and societies of men in general, our 
love of the marvellous receives intense gratification 
from the novelty and ludicrousness of the situa- 
tions and incidents. One may be allowed to read 
' Gulliver's Travels ' as a romance, and take the 
satire in it by the way. 

Novels of In 1740 appeared Samuel Richardson's ' Pamela; 

lot^'^' or, Virtue Rewarded.' The ' History of Clarissa 

^ Mr. Gay to Dr. Swift November, 1726. 



CHAP. IL] FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE. 5 1 

Harlowe,' by the same author, came out eight years 
afterwards, and was followed by the ' History of Sir 
Charles Grandison.' In these long-breathed novels 
fictitious narrative takes the form of private letters, 
in which the principal actors relate to their respec- 
tive correspondents the transactions and conversa- 
tions forming the material of the story. This mode 
of telling his story appears to have arisen from 
a friendly bookseller's suggestion that Richardson How 
should write ' a little volume of letters, in a common epistolary 
style, on such subjects as might be of use to those adoDted 
country readers who were unable to indite for them- 
selves.'-^ He may also have been induced to adopt 
the epistolary form of narrative from the circum- 
stance of his having in early life, when a printer's 
apprentice in a small town in Derbyshire, been 
employed by some young women — to whom, when 
at work with their needles, he was in the custom 
of reading — to write their love letters ; a species of 
literary practice not extinct in more recent times at 
Cairo and Seville, and made the subject of pictures 
by Wilkie and Phillip. To this early schooling 
in the secrets of the female heart may perhaps be 
traced that fine pencilling and delicate shading 
visible in his characters of women. All his person- 
ages, but especially those of the fair sex, have not 
only their actions, but their looks and thoughts 
written down small, at whatever cost of tediousness 
to the reader. 

The patient circumstantiality with which Defoe 

^ Mrs. Barbauld's Life and Con-espondence of Sa??iuel Richardson. 

E 2 



52 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book r. 

and Swift invested their incidents, Richardson 
appHed to individual character. His novels, new 
in their kind, were received on their first appear- 
ance with the plaudits both of the literary and the 
fashionable world. The readers of the old romances 
looked upon them as of very moderate length, and 
readers of another stamp were gratified to discover, 
flowing through a large margin of sentiment, a 
tolerably full rivulet of sensational incident and 
description. ' Clarissa Harlowe' is the best of his 
tales, as well in point of delineation of character as 
of strong feeling. The character of Lovelace is 
partly drawn from the Lothario of Rowe's ' Fair 
Penitent ;' that of Clarissa is more original and 
Pamela, imaginative, and full of pathetic interest. In ' Pamela ' 
there is a dash of selfishness and a degree of artful, 
or at least equivocal conduct, mixed up with the 
virtue of the heroine, which makes the moral of her 
story somewhat doubtful. When a Pamela or a 
Lavinia Fen ton make a fair use of the weapon of 
beauty with which the poet tells us nature has 
armed their sex, a marriage to a wealthy squire or a 
duke is by right of open conquest ; but when a train 
of skilful manoeuvring is brought in aid of the 
native power of beauty, however the fair one may 
have retained her virtue, the moral of the lesson is 
not so clear as the admirers of Richardson's ' Pamela ' 
would have it to be.^ As regards ' Sir Charles 



^ Lady Mary Wortley Montague, in a letter to her daughter, 
the Countess of Bute, from Italy in 1751, relates an odd adven- 
ture in real life which she believed to have been copied from or 



CHAP. II.] FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE. 53 

Grandlson,' the baronet's stilted morality, and the 
tiresomely slow evolution of the plot, to some extent 
redeemed by the interest attaching to Clementina, 
have rendered it almost proverbial. Even the vio- 
lent measures of Sir Hargrave Pollexfen are a relief 
from Sir Charles's tedious perfection. These novels 
were all translated, and became very popular in 
France ; so much so that when Horace Walpole was 
at Paris, in the winter of 1765, he found David 
Hume and Richardson the favourite English 
authors.-^ 

'Pamela' did not escape the wicked wit of Henry 
Fielding, whose 'Joseph Andrews' was written with Field- 
the view of ridiculing its affectation and prudery. jJleph 
The title-page set forth ' The Adventures of Joseph Andrews. 
Andrews and his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams' to be 
an imitation of the manner of Cervantes. The Rev. 
Mr. Adams is one of the most humorous and 
amusing personages in English fiction, and the 
adventures of the two friends are related with a 
serio-com.ic air so irresistible that the author's inten- 
tion being to paint the ridiculous, we must admiit 
him to have succeeded in it, though possibly not 
approving all the touches of his pencil. There is a 
facility and apparent truthfulness in his delineation 
of character worthy of Addison or Cervantes him- 
self. Fielding's discretion may be questioned when 

inspired by ' Pamela.' ' I know not,' her Ladyship adds, ' under 
what constellation that foolish stuff was wrote, but it has been 
translated into more languages than any modern performance I 
ever heard of.' — Works of Lady M. IV. Mo?itague, edited by Lord 
Wharncliffe., vol. ii. p. 417. 
^ Walpole's Correspondence, 1765. 



54 V/EJV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

he suggests a comparison with the Spanish writer ; 
but however he may have proposed to imitate the 
' serious air' of the author of ' Don Quixote,' he is, 
in a great measure, saved the risk of comparison by 
the essential difference in the materials and costume 
of the Spanish and the English story. 

The genius of Fielding was truly original, and 
accordingly we find that in his introductions to the 
Tom chapters of ' Tom Jones,' written seven years after- 
Jones, wards, he abjures all imitation except that of ' human 
nature.' He had seen English life in its higher and 
in its lower walks, and the essence of this experience 
he produced to the world in his ' History of Tom 
1749. Jones,' showing up human nature as modified by the 
accidents of situation, breeding, country or towm life. 
In this novel the ingredients of generosity, kind- 
liness, and charity alternate, but in too small a pro- 
portion, with unbridled passion, sensual indulgence, 
and degrading vice. With all this the conduct of 
the plot is admirably managed, the marvellous 
restrained within the bounds of probability, and 
every incident and circumstance bears upon the con- 
clusion. The other novels of Fielding, ' Amelia' 
and 'Jonathan Wild,' are inferior to 'Joseph An- 
drews ' and ' Tom Jones,' though possessing a cer- 
tain merit of their own. It was in application to 
this author that Lord Byron took the distinction 
between vulgarity and coarseness ; Fielding, accord- 
ing to his lordship, being often coarse, but never 
vulgar.^ 

^ Gibbon, in his Autobiography, alluding to the family of the 



CHAP. II.] FICTiriOUS NARRATIVE. 55 

The novels of Smollett are usually named with Smollett's 
those of Fielding. They no doubt resemble each their in- 
other in some things, but also differ. Fielding and aiity^and 

Smollett both drew their inspiration from nature and tumor- 
ous ex- 

from common life ; both were masters, so to speak, aggera- 
of low comedy ; but Fielding's comedy and his 
characters were more generalised than those of 
Smollett. In the satirical sketches of both there 
is a large measure of personality, but more in 
Smollett than in Fielding. Humorous exaggera- 
tions of individual character and highly-coloured 
description Smollett knew to be his forte, and he 
pushed it to an extreme. His best novels are those 
in which there is most of his personal experience. 
In ' Roderick Random,' where he sketches his 
female cousins in Dumbartonshire, and his own ad- 
ventures as a surgeon's mate ; and in ' Humphrey 
Clinker,' where he travels and visits in Scotland 
and at Bath, there is much of his personal expe- 
rience, the incidents and characters heightened and 
coloured to the highest humorous pitch. In ' Ro- 
derick Random' incidents of the war with France 
in the years preceding are mixed up with the 
fictitious narrative ; and in this and other novels of 
Smollett may be marked many features of the 
English navy in the middle of the last century. 



Fieldings and the Earl of Denbigh having a common ancestor 
with the House of Hapsburg, says, in his lofty manner : ' The 
successors of Charles V. may disdain their brethren of England ; 
but the romance of Tom Jones, that exquisite picture of human 
manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the imperial 
eagle of the House of Austria.' 



56 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

'Peregrine Pickle' and 'Count Fathom' have less 
reality, and are of an inferior stamp. 

In the management of the plot Smollett has pro- 
duced nothing to equal ' Tom Jones.' In the pre- 
face to ' Roderick Random' he professes to take 
'Gil Bias' for his model; and his style so far re- 
sembles Le Sage that his novels present a succes- 
sion of amusing scenes, in which the persons do not 
remain the same, rather than an artistically de- 
veloped story. 

In the last year of the reign of George II. an 
autobiography of a quite original kind made its 
appearance — the ' Life and Opinions of Tristram 
Shandy, Gentleman,' produced from the secluded 
study of a Yorkshire clergyman. The two first 
volumes, printed at York, but published in London, 
were run upon with eager curiosity, and in one day 
the Rev. Lawrence Sterne became famous. 

Without being a Rabelais or a Swift, no small 
share of their humour, eccentricity and satirical vein, 
Tristram fell to the lot of the author of ' Tristram Shandy.' 
The subsequent volumes of his book were not so 
successful as the first, and objections were started 
by the critics on the score of affectation and in- 
decency. Allowing these objections their due 
weight, ' Tristram Shandy ' and the ' Sentimental 
Journey through France and Italy ' yet take their 
place in English literature as works of genius ; and 
many of their incidents as well as personages — 
Trim, Lefevre, Uncle Toby, Yorick — are familiar 
as household words. With hardly any story or 
connection, the rambling pages of Sterne are replete 



CHAP. II.] FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE. 57 

with the finest touches of character, and remarkable 
also for that singular union of the pathetic and the 
humorous, characteristic of writers of the highest 
genius.^ 

In the same year with ' Tristram Shandy,' ap- 
peared Dr. Johnson's ' Rasselas,' a beautifully written Rasselas. 
disquisition on human happiness and the difficulty of 
attaining it, couched in the form of an Eastern tale. 
The moralist who might ' shake his head at Dr. 
Swift,' or at Fielding and Smollett, may place 
* Rasselas ' on the most fastidious table. It has 
little incident, but is full of thought and sentiment, 
expressed in eloquent language and tinged with 
a certain melancholy, which was constitutional in 
Johnson, and perhaps increased by the circumstances 
in which the book was written ; it being composed in 
the afternoons of the week in which his mother died. 

The ' Vicar of Wakefield,' by Oliver Goldsmith, 
came out in 1766, his poem of 'The Traveller' vicar of 
having appeared the year before. It was not ex- fieid!^" 
pected to have much success, and the manuscript, 
for which Goldsmith received the sum of sixty 
guineas, was allowed to remain fifteen months in the 
bookseller's hands. With much of the humour and 
truth to nature of the writing of Fielding, more 
elevated in sentiment and more sober in its colour- 
ing, the ' Vicar of Wakefield ' slowly but surely mxade 

^ The works of Sterne, as of Goldsmith, have furnished subjects 
for some well-known pictures by masters of the EngHsh school. 
Such are ' Uncle Toby and Widow Wadman ' by Leslie, ' Yorick 
and the Grisette' by Newton, and the 'Whistonian Controversy' 
by Mulready. 



5B 



VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART [book I. 



Its deli- 
neations 
of cha- 
racter. 



Wal- 
pole's 
Castle of 
Otranto. 



its way to public favour. The masterly delineations 
of Dr. Primrose and his family, of Jenkinson and 
Burchill, have become, as it were, domiciliated in 
England ; reminding one of the recorded observa- 
tion of an old monk on the figures in one of Titian's 
masterpieces in the Escurial, that they were the 
realities and men the shadows ! ^ Both ' Rasselas ' 
and the ' Vicar of Wakefield ' were very soon 
translated into French and German. In Germany 
the Vicar was read with eagerness, and highly ap- 
preciated.^ 

The year 1765 witnessed the revival, in a com- 
paratively diminutive form, of the old romance. The 
' Castle of Otranto,' by the Hon. Horace Walpole, 
was composed in the congenial atmosphere of 
Strawberry Hill, and like the Gothic architecture of 
that celebrated villa, was rather suggestive than of 
great merit in itself With ari easy idiomatic style, 
and a portraiture of characters and manners not too 



^ Earl Stanhope's Histo7y of England^ vi. 498. 

2 Among the autobiographical reminiscences in Goethe's Dich- 
tung und Wahrheit, is an interesting notice of the Vicar of Wake- 
fields in which the following passage occurs : ' The representation 
of the character of Dr. Primrose in his life- walk through joy and 
sorrow, the always-increasing interest of the story by the blending 
of the natural with the marvellous, render this tale one of the best 
that ever was written; while it has, besides, the great merit of 
being perfectly moral ; indeed, in the pure sense of the word, 
Christian. ... It left a great impression upon me, and which I 
could not well account for ; but I felt myself entirely in accord 
with that serio-comic {ironisches) vein of sentiment that rises 
above circumstances, above fortune and misfortune, good and bad, 
death and life, and so attains to the possession of a truly poetical 
world.' — Dichtung und Wahr/ieit, B. x. 



CHAP. II.] FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE. 59 

improbable, there is yet such a want of keeping and 
proportion in the supernatural machinery of gigantic 
helmets and the like, that the most eager lover of 
the marvellous has difficulty in .allowing his imagina- 
tion to be carried along with it. Walpole's forte lay 
more in letter-writing than in either fictitious or real 
history ; and the following account of the ' Castle of 
Otranto/ in a letter from him to the Rev. Mr. Cole, 
is perhaps better than anything in the book itself : — 

I had time to write but a short note with the ' Castle of 
Otranto,' as your messenger called on me at four o'clock, as 
I was going to dine abroad. Your partiality to me and 
Strawberry Hill have, I hope, inclined you to excuse the 
wildness of the story. You will even have found some 
traits to put you in mind of this place. When you read of 
the picture quitting its panel, did not you recollect the 
portrait of Lord Falkland, all in white, in my gallery } 
Shall I even confess to you what was the origin of this 
romance } I waked one morning in the beginning of last 
June from a dream, of which all I could recover was, that 
I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural 
dream for a head filled like mine with Gothic story), and 
that on the uppermost banister of a great staircase I saw 
a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down and 
began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended 
to say or relate. The work grew on my hands, and I grew 
fond of it ; add, that I was very glad to think of anything 
rather than politics. In short, I was so engrossed with 
my tale, which I completed in less than two months, that 
one evening I wrote from the time I had drank my tea, 
about six o'clock, till half an hour after one in the morning, 
when my hand and fingers were so weary that I could not 
hold the pen to finish the sentence, but left Matilda and 
Isabella talking in the middle of a paragraph. You will 
laugh at my earnestness, but if I have amused you by re- 
tracing with any fidelity the m.anners of ancient days, I 



6o 



VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 



Roman- 
ces of 
Mrs.Rad- 
cliffe and 
Clara 
Reeve. 



Miss 

Burney's 

Evelina 

and 

Cecilia. 



am content, and give you leave to think me as idle as you 
please. 

In the path of romance Clara Reeve and Mrs. 
Radcliffe follov^ed in the wake of the ' Castle of 
Otranto'. The ' Old English Baron ' of the for- 
mer, the ' Mysteries of Udolpho,' ' Romance of the 
Forest,' and ' Italian' of Mrs. Radcliffe, possess a 
hazy and mysterious interest for the youthful reader 
which a perusal in after years will hardly revive. 
In the best of these romances, the ' Mysteries of 
Udolpho,' there is an attempt to explain the marvels 
of the story, which leaves the reader under the un- 
satisfactory impression of their being neither true 
nor false. Of romances by other writers in the man- 
ner of Mrs. Radcliffe (the memory of which may 
still exist in circulating libraries) the most remark- 
able was the ' Monk ' of M. G. Lewis, and the 
' Montorio ' of the Rev. Mr. Maturin. 

Returning from the modern romance to the novel, 
the authoress of ' Evelina ' claims our notice. This 
first novel of Miss Burney, afterwards Madame 
d'Arblay, was received with an amount of admira- 
tion on the part of the literary society of London — 
of Mr. Burke, Dr. Johnson, and Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds — which the intrinsic merit of the book can 
hardly account for. Miss Burney undoubtedly wrote 
with sprlghtliness and grace, describing scenes with 
vivacity, and characterising odd and vulgar people 
amusingly ; but in the portraiture of character and 
the exhibition of sentiment by fine and minute 
touches, and in the conduct of her story, she is much 
inferior to Richardson, whose epistolary method she 



CHAP. II.] FICTITIO US NARRA TIVE. 6 1 

has adopted. ' So far had I written of my letter,' 
Mrs. Thrale writes to Dr. Burney, ' when Mr. 
Johnson returned home full of the praises of ' Eve- 
lina/ and protesting there were passages in it which 
might do honour to Richardson. We talk of it for 
ever, and he feels ardent for the denouement.' ^ As 
to Miss Burney's next novel, ' Cecilia,' Mr. Burke 
thus expresses himself : ' There are few, I may 
say fairly there are none, that will not find them- 
selves better informed concerning human nature, and 
their stock of observation enriched, by reading 
your ' Cecilia.' ^ Miss Burney's subsequent novels of 
' Camilla ' and another failed in attracting the same 
attention as ' Evelina' and ' Cecilia.'^ 

The public taste, as regards fictitious narrative, 
was now becoming more refined ; and the imitators 
of the early novelists, retaining their coarseness and 
wanting their talent, soon fell into oblivion. This 
was the fate of the ' Zeluco ' of Dr. Moore, one of 
the best of these imitations, which had its season of 
popularity. 

In some portions of the works of Henry Mac- 



' July 22, 1778. Madame d'Arblay's IDia?j, i. 58. 

'^ July 29, 1782. Diary, ii. 148. 

^ An ingredient entering largely into the public admiration of 
Miss Burney's novel-writing was her youth, Evelina having been 
long supposed to be the production of a young lady of seventeen. 
But a reviewer in the Quaj^terly (in an article on Dr. Burney's 
Memoirs) for April 1833, actuated by an uncourteous spirit of in- 
quiry, and having his suspicions aroused by an obvious inattention 
to dates in the early portion of Madame d'Arblay's own Diary, has 
discovered, by consulting the register of her birth at L5ain, that, 
in 1778, when Evelina was published. Miss Burney must have 
completed her twenty- fifth year. 



^2 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

Novels kenzie, author of the ' Man of FeeHng,' the ' Man of 
Macken- the World/ and 'JuHa de Roubigne,' Sterne has 
found an Imitator, in some degree, of his sensiblHty 
without his Indehcacy, but wanting his rich humour 
and strong grasp of character. Mr. Mackenzie's 
novels display originality of thought and fancy, and 
are graceful and chaste in style ; their excess of 
sentiment and prevailing strain of melancholy giving 
them a marked character. Among his papers In the 
'Lounger' and 'Mirror' is the beautiful story of 
' La Roche ' (published In the collection of his 
writings), where he introduces a sketch of Mr. 
Hume in the character of a benevolent sceptic, and 
aims to subdue infidelity by the force of sensibility. 
New After the commencement of the French Revolu- 

ficdon.^ tion, at a time when men's minds were stirred by 
social and political theories of an extreme kind, It Is 
not surprising that some of these theories should 
have sought for an exponent In fiction. Of this an 
example was given in ' Caleb Williams,' ' St. Leon,' 
and other novels of Mr. Godwin, author of ' An 
Inquiry into Political Justice.' ' Caleb Williams,' 
according to Its preface, was intended to contain a 
general view of ' the modes of domestic and unre- 
corded despotism by which man becomes the de- 
stroyer of man.' It Is mainly an attack on the 
system of the administration of English law, con- 
veyed In a personal story of painful Interest. But 
the writing at this period was not all In favour of 
the doctrines of the Revolution. Canning (in the 
* Antljacobin ') and others assisted in stemming the 
current. Works of fiction lent their aid to support 



CHAP. ii.J ■ FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE. 63 

the existing order of things, — an example of which, 
of an entertaining sort, was a novel entitled ' Memoirs 
of Modern Philosophers,' by Elizabeth Hamilton, 
authoress of the ' Cottagers of Glenburnie.' 

At the commencement of the present century Novel 
novel writing had greatly increased, but in its quality ^j."\^g^ ^^ 
had come to a very low ebb ; * for certainly (to use com- 

•^ "^ ^ mence- 

the words of Lord Jeffrey) a greater mass of trash ment of 
and rubbish never disgraced the press of any country century. 
than the ordinary novels that filled and supported 
our circulating libraries down nearly to the time of 
Miss Edgeworth's first appearance.'^ The author- 
ship of Maria Edgeworth began in the first year of 
the century. 'Castle Rackrent,' 'an Hibernian tale, Miss 
taken from facts and from the manners of the Irish wonh's 
squires before the year 1782,' is a series of graphic Jfo^gig^^^ 
sketches of the lives and proceedings of the drunken 
Sir Patrick, the litigious Sir Murtagh, the fighting- 
Sir Kit, and the slovenly Sir Condy Rackrent, related 
by an old Irish steward in his vernacular idiom. 
' When Ireland,' says Miss Edgeworth in the pre- 
face, ' loses her identity by an union with Great 
Britain, she will look back with a smile of good- 
humoured complacency on the Sir Kits and Sir 
Condys of her former existence.' ' Castle Rackrent ' 
was followed by ' Belinda,' the advertisement to 
which demonstrates the feelings of Miss Edgeworth 1801. 
as to the novels of the period : — 

The following work is offered to the public as a Moral 
Tale, the author not wishing to acknowledge a novel. 

^ Prefatory Notice to Contributions by Lord Jeffrey to the Edin- 
burgh Review. 



64 VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

Were all novels like those of Madame de Crousatz (author 
of ' Caroline de Lichtfield ') Mrs. Inchbald, Miss Burney, 
or Dr. Moore, she would adopt the name of novel with 
delight ; but so much folly, error and vice, are disseminated 
in books classed under this denomination, that it is hoped 
the wish to assume another title will be attributed to feel- 
ings that are laudable and not fastidious. 

The ' Popular Tales ' of Miss Edgeworth ap- 
peared in 1 804, the title having" been chosen ' not as 
a presumptuous and premature claim to popularity, 
but from the wish that they may be current beyond 
circles which are sometimes exclusively considered 
as polite.' In these, and indeed in all the writings of 
Miss Edgeworth — ' Moral Tales,' ' Parents' Assistant,' 
&c. — it was her constant aim to exemplify and pro- 
mote the principles of practical education contained 
in the more didactic works on education by herself 
and her father, Mr. Richard Lovell Edgeworth. 
1809. The ' Tales of Fashionable Life ' were intended espe- 
cially to point out some of the errors, bad habits and 
affectations, to which the higher classes of society are 

1813. disposed. ' Patronage ' is one of the best of her 
larger novels ; after it came out ' Harrington,' ' Or- 
mond,' and (latest of all) ' Helen.' 

Their in- The earlier tales of Maria Edgeworth at once re- 

oiTscott deemed the mediocrity of the fictitious writing of the 

day, and had some influence in leading the way to the 

novels of Sir Walter Scott. In a letter from his printer 

1814. and publisher, James Ballantyne, to Miss Edgeworth, 
the writer says, that from intercourse with the author 
of ' Waverley,' while ' Waverley' was going through 
the press, he knew that the exquisite truth andjDower 



CHAP. II.] FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE, 65 

of Miss Edgeworth's characters operated on his mind 
at once to excite and subdue it.^ In the delineation 
of character, particularly Irish character, Miss 
Edgeworth has not been excelled by Lady Morgan, 
Mr. Lever, and other later writers. Her tales com- Didactic 
mended themselves to the understanding as well as ^^^^ ° 
to the fancy, inculcating moral truth in the guise of ^"^ovels. 
fiction, rebuking folly and prejudice by the force of 
ridicule and humour. With much merit in this 
respect, Miss Edgeworth's novels have a certain 
teaching or lecturing tone not always agreeable in a 
novel ; England being made, as it were, the Dame's 
School of this accomplished authoress.^ In the 
conduct and denouement of the plot it has been ob- 
served that her stories are generally, if not unnatural, 
at least improbable, the events of most consequence, 
with hardly an exception, being brought about by 
providential coincidences.^ If, however, this be a 
fault, it is one which may be objected to nearly every 
work of fiction that looks more to the producing of 
striking effects than to the doctrine of probabilities. 

The novels of Miss Jane Austen, of which the Miss 
first, ' Sense and Sensibility,' appeared in 181 1, have no"veiT^ 
certainly the merit of greater probability of incident. 
As her style became more formed, Miss Austen's 

1 Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott ^ vol. iii. p. 303. The in- 
fluence exercised by Miss Edgeworth's success in stimulating him 
to the writing of Waverley, is referred to by Scott himself in the 
General Preface to his novels, many years after. 

2 Don Juan's model parent, Donna Inez, is compared by Lord 

Byron to 

Miss Edgeworth's novels stepping from their cover. 

^ Qiiarterly Review for January 182 1. 

F 



66 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

subsequent tales, * Mansfield Park/ ' Pride and Pre- 
judice,' ' Emma' and ' Persuasion,' displayed qualities 
entitling her to a high rank among writers of fiction. 
Their perfect naturalness, and truthful rendering of 
the life of the upper middle class of English society, 
will always please. Without the brilliant talent and 
pretension of Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen's ex- 
pressive manner gains upon her readers like the 
beauty of some women, not remarkable or striking 
at first, but improving unaccountably on farther ac- 
quaintance. Her quick perception of the minor 
follies and absurdities of life, and her easy and lively 
way of bringing them out, contribute to give a 
piquancy to her stories which enhances their moral 
tendency without the reader being aware of it. 
Waverley The appearance in 1814 at Edinburgh, of 'Waver- 
ley, or 'Tis Sixty Years Since ' (the first portion of 
it having been written in 1805), and the long train 
of novels and romances that followed from the same 
quarter, forms an era in the history of fictitious 
narrative. Although his incognito was not formally 
withdrawn till 1825, the 'man in the mask' was 
very soon revealed to many of his countrymen, from 
internal evidence, to be no other than Walter Scott, 
already known to the public as the editor of the 
* Border Minstrelsy ' and the author of ' Marmion.' 
His previous literary pursuits, his extensive reading 
in history, his antiquarian and traditionary lore, his 
powers of memory and imagination, his knowledge 
of life, his genial and widely sympathetic nature, all 
contributed materials for the composition of the 
Waverlev novels. 



novels. 



CHAP. II.] FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE, 67 

Hardly had people ceased to talk of the thoroughly 
well-drawn and amusingly-coloured picture of Scot- 
tish manners and character, at the period of the 
' forty-five,' presented by ' Waverley,' than it was 
followed by * Guy Mannering,' then by the ' Anti- 
quary,' * Rob Roy,' the three series of the ' Tales of 
My Landlord,' and ' Ivanhoe.' ^ In the article upon 
* Ivanhoe,' in the ' Edinburgh Review ' for January 
1820, Mr. Jeffrey pays Scott the high compliment 
of comparing him with Shakespeare : — 

In the period of little more than five years, he has 
founded a new school of invention, and established and 
endowed it with nearly thirty volumes of the most animated 
and original compositions that have enriched English lite- 
rature for a century ; volumes that have cast into the shade 
all contemporary prose, and even all recent poetry (except 
perhaps, that inspired by the genius — or demon — of Byron), 
and by their force of colouring, and depth of feeling, by 
their variety, vivacity, magical facility and living present- 
ment of character, have rendered conceivable to this later 
age the miracles of the mighty dramatist. 

As of Shakespeare, so it may with truth be said 
of Scott, that to him nature ' unveiled her face.' 



^ In a letter dated from Abbotsford in the autumn of 181 7, Sir 
David Wilkie remarks — ' The family here are equally in the dark 
about whether Mr. Scott is the author of the novels. They are 
quite perplexed about it. They hope he is the author, and would 
be gi'eatly mortified if it were to turn out that he was not. He 
has frequently talked about the different characters to us, and the 
young ladies express themselves greatly provoked with the sort of 
unconcern he affects towards them.' Cunningham's Life of Wilkie, 
i. 482. The formal avowal of the authorship of the novels was 
not made till brought out by Lord Meadowbank at a Theatrical 
Fund dinner in Edinburgh in 1825. 

F 2 



68 VIEJV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book. i. 

The extent of his traditional and historical lore was 
not more remarkable than his Insight into, and 
sympathetic acquaintance with, the feelings of men 
and their springs and motives of action. 

* Ivanhoe ' was follov/ed by the ' Monastery' and 
' Abbot,' and these by ' Kenilworth,' in which the 
genius of Scott may be said to have culminated. 
In the variety and richness of the scenery and de- 
scriptions in this novel, and in the pathos of the 
story, it has not been excelled by any of his later 
productions. Several good novels, the ' Fortunes 
of Nigel,' ' Quentin Durward,' the ' Talisman,' came 
out, along with others not of equal merit, in rapid 
succession ; but the wand of the enchanter, which 
had called so many spirits from the deep of the past, 
gradually lost Its power, and the series was closed 
in 1 83 1 by paralysis and death. 

The novels and romances of Scott are nearly 
all historical, though in a greater or less degree ; 
some taking both the persons and events of real 
history, as ' Waverley,' the ' Legend of Montrose,' 
' Quentin Durward,' ' Old Mortality, ; ' some dealing 
with minor incidents of history, and Introducing real 
characters, as ' Rob Roy,' the ' Heart of Midlothian,' 
' Kenilworth ; ' others again being confined to the 
illustration of national manners and habits at parti- 
cular periods, as ' Guy Mannering,' the ' Antiquary,' 
'St. Ronan's Well.' 
Scott's Unless Defoe's ' Memoirs of a Cavalier,' and 

claim to 

original- ' Journal of the Plague Year ' (although these have 
historical no plot or story), or Smollett's ' Roderick Random,' 
^°^^^* be considered to have anticipated the historical 



CHAR 11,] FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE, 69 

novel of Scott, Sir Walter may be regarded (to 
use the words of a late writer) as having been 
* the first to show how much invention might gain 
by a union with reality ; what additional probability, 
interest and importance, might be given to the for- 
tunes of Imaginary heroes, by Interweaving their 
destinies with those of historical personages ; nay, 
how much of romance in its finest forms lies in 
the characters and events of history Itself, Invisible 
to the prosaic or merely philosophic observer, but 
obvious at once to the eye of imagination.' In this 
respect, the Waverley novels may be regarded as 
creations by themselves, differing from previous 
works of fiction ; but they resemble the best ex- 
amples that exist of fictitious narrative, in represent- 
ing character truthfully and developing powerfully His 
the workings of natural feelings in the breasts and ledge of 
the actions of men. The scenes and surroundings nature^ 
of their narratives are, indeed, taken from the past ; 
but humanity, however modified externally by na- 
tional manners and the process of civilisation, is the 
same in a remote age as in the present age, the 
same in the highlands of Scotland as it is on the 
banks of the Loire. 

In the department of fictitious writing the in- influence 
fluence of the novels of Scott was very marked ; but ley novels 
so far as regards actual benefit to literature, its °^it\ng of 
operation has perhaps been less direct than Indirect, fiction. 
The direct imitators of Sir Walter Scott's style and 
manner have not been quite successful In their 
efforts. The historical and antique setting may be 
there, but the genuine stone is wanting. The his- 



70 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

torical romances of Mr. James — the earliest of which, 
* Richelieu,' appeared in 1825 — have considerable 
merit, and are not without interest ; but they are 
too much spun out, and are deficient in the higher 
qualities of fictitious narrative. The Scotch novels of 
Gait, which possess a copious fund of sly humour, 
were brought out rapidly between 18 19 and 1823. 
His * Annals of the Parish ' and ' Entail ' are superior 
to his other quasi-historical novels. Cooper, if to be 
considered at all an imitator of Scott, takes very 
different scenes and subjects for the display of his 
novel-writing talent. 

It is rather by elevating the tone of fictitious 
waiting, and by their general suggestiveness, that 
the Waverley novels have influenced some of their 
1820. successors. The scene of Mr. Lockhart's ' Valerius,' 
1827, and of Mr. Moore's ' Epicurean,' is laid in that 
transition period when the Roman empire was veer- 
ing from paganism towards Christianity, and, having 
regard to the difficulties to be encountered, they are 
written with power and feeling. Miss Ferrier's novels 
of ' Marriage,' ' Inheritance,' and ' Destiny,' show a 
certain resemblance to Miss Austen's manner, with 
a piquant and amusing flavour of the humour and 
delineation of Scottish manners of Sir Walter Scott. 
The novels of Charlotte Bronte are also above 
average merit. The oriental romances of Mr. Morier, 
1832. ' Zohrab,' 'Ayesha,' and others, possess some good 
qualities of the Waverley tales, displayed in new 
and interesting circumstances. 

The novels of domestic life and manners, whether 
high life or low life, which have more recently ap- 



CHAP. II.] FICTITIO US NARRA TIVE. 7 ^ 

peared, are as a class superior to those in the begin- 
ning of the century. Among the most amusing are 
those of Theodore Hook and Captain Marryatt 
In several instances novel writing in the present 
century has ascended to quarters of high social 
position ; and to Mr. Lister, the Marquis of Nor- 
manby, Mrs. Gore, Lady Dacre, and others now 
deceased, we are indebted for some of the best of 
what have been called 'fashionable novels.' As one Fashion- 
of the various departments of human life, the habits novels. 
and sentiments of high society are no doubt a legi- 
timate theme for the novelist ; and novels in which 
the personages belong to the fashionable world are 
occasionally made vehicles for very skilful and enter- 
taining delineations of manners and character, and 
of phases of public opinion, interspersed with his- 
torical incidents. But fashionable manners, merely 
as such, do not as a rule afford the best theme for 
the novelist. The story, in the general run of such 
novels, is usually of very slender texture, with great 
lack of incidents. It is for the most part overlaid 
with an accumulation of descriptions of society and 
successions of scenes in town and in the country, 
the leading interest of which lies not so much in 
their bearing upon the main plot, as in gratifying 
the curiosity of the general reader to know how 
the ' high characters ' drawn in the novel conduct 
themselves in London life, or at a ducal country 
mansion. When taken up by imitators, who describe 
fashionable life at second hand, or by ' fair women 
without discretion,' these novels become very trashy 
performances. 



72 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

In the external bearing and manners of the upper 
classes of countries of European civilization there 
is so much conventionalism and reserve, and so 
much routine in their habits, that very little scope is 
in general afforded for incident and adventure, and 
the display of feeling. It is the fact of there being 
greater scope for both in the middle and lower 
walks of life, especially in the latter, which renders 
them more fertile of subject for the writer of fiction. 
Fielding and Scott have acknowledged this, both in 
theory and in their practice ; and it has been con- 
firmed by the practice (though that may not be 
constant) of Lord Lytton, Mr. Thackeray, and Mr. 
Dickens in more recent times. 

I have (says Sir Walter Scott in his original preface to 
the 'Antiquary,') sought my principal personages in the 
class of society who are the last to feel the influence of 
that general polish which assimilates to each other the 
manners of different nations. Among the same class I 
have placed some of the scenes in which I have en- 
deavoured to illustrate the operations of the higher and 
more violent passions ; both because the lower orders are 
less restrained by the habit of suppressing their feelings, 
and because I agree with Mr. Wordsworth, that they 
seldom fail to express them in the strongest and most 
powerful language. 

The sensational novels of the present day do not 
fall to be noticed in this summary. The great 
loss which fictitious writing has sustained by the 
recent decease of Mr. Thackeray and Mr. Dickens, 
it is unnecessary to do more than refer to. Some 
years should pass before their popular works can 
be duly taken note of or estimated. 



CHAP, III.] POETRY, 73 



CHAPTER III. 

POETRY. 

Can Poetry be defined ? — Poetry of Pope, of two kinds — 
Satirical Poems of Johnson — Of Churchill — Poetry of 
Thomson — Of Rains ay — Of Dr. Edzvard Young — 
Lyrics of Collins and Gi^ay — Poems of Goldsmith — 
Beattie — Warton and others — Poetry and original 
manjier of Cowper. 

Towards the conclusion of his ' Life of Pope/ Dr. 
Johnson observes : — ' After all this it is surely 
superfluous to answer the question that has once 
been asked/ whether Pope was a poet — otherwise 
than by asking in return, If Pope be not a poet, 
where is poetry to be found ? To circumscribe 
poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness 
of the definer, though a definition which shall ex- 
clude Pope will not easily be made.' Not disputing 
the danger of circumscribing poetry by a definition, 
certain qualities may be adverted to which two of 
the greatest masters of the art appear to have re- 
garded as proper to poetry. Milton, in his ' Treatise charac- 
of Education ' distinguishes Poetry from Logic as oTpoetry, 
being * more simple, sensuous, and passionate : ' that 
is, not complex or subtle, but dealing with simple 



^ By Dr. Joseph Warton, author of an Essay on the Genius and 
Writings of Pope, and who may be regarded as the founder of 
the modern school of poetic criticism in England. 



74 VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

elements ; not abstract, but sensible and real ; not 
cold and inanimate, but moved by and expressing 
human passions and sympathies. Shakespeare, again, 
speaks of the poet as being * of imagination all com- 
pact ; ' thus implying imagination, or the exercise of 
the power of conceiving and bodying forth images, 
to be also an essential attribute of poetry. Upon 
so high authority it may be allowable to assume 
these qualities, or some of them, to be inherent in 
all true poetry ; and the following notices will touch 
upon such poetry only as shall seem to possess them 
in a more or less ample measure. 
Poetry of With the poetry of Pope an historical view of 
Pastorals! ^^e later British poetry should commence. His first 
pieces in verse of any importance were four Pas- 
torals or Eclogues, which appeared in ' Tonson's 
Miscellany' of 1709. They are prefaced by a short 
discourse on pastoral poetry, intimating the author's 
theory of this kind of composition to be an imitation 
of the manner of Theocritus and Virgil. ' If we 
would copy nature,' says he, ' it may be useful to 
take this idea along with us, that Pastoral is an 
image of what they call the Golden Age.' Pope's 
shepherds are therefore conventional in their sen- 
timents and manners, and his imagery is what may 
be called hereditary in classical pastoral.^ Their 



^ In the years immediately following the publication of Pope's 
Pastorals, a literary dispute arose as to the proper theory of this 
kind of writing ; a party having been formed in favour of an 
actual representation of rustic life in England, instead of the con- 
ventional or Sicilian rustic life of the ancient models. Upon this 
new view the Shepherd's Week of Gay was written early in 1714. 



CHAP. III.] POETRY. 75 

chief merit is in the correct and musical versification, 
and in giving the first example of that harmony in 
English verse which was afterwards considered so 
indispensable.^ The * Essay on Criticism' was 
brought out anonymously in 1 7 1 1 , in a small quarto 
form. 

If the ' Essay on Criticism ' and a large proportion 
of the subsequent poetry of Pope, drew its inspiration 
from Horace, a considerable share of the early 
offerings of his muse fell to Virgil. The ' Messiah,' Pope's 
a prophetic song or hymn in imitation of the fourth fmkation 
Eclogue of Virgil, appeared in Addison's ' Spectator.' °f ^'J^gi^- 
The invocation of the Roman bard : — 

Sicelides Musae, paullo majora canamus ; 

Non omnes arbusta juvant humilesque myricse — 

In the preface Mr. Gay proposes ' to describe aright the manners 
of our own honest and laborious ploughmen, in no wise sure more 
unworthy of a British poet's imitation than those of Sicily or 
Arcadia,' and to set before the reader a landscape of his own 
countr)^ : — ' Thou wilt not find my shepherdesses idly piping on 
oaten reeds, but milking the kine, tying up the sheaves, and, if 
the hogs go astray, driving them to their styes. My shepherd 
gathereth none other nosegays but what are the growth of our own 
fields ; he sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under a hedge,. 
nor doth he vigilantly defend his flock from wolves, because there 
are none.' Accordingly the talk of Gay's Grubbinol and Bum- 
kinet, Hobnelia and Blouzelinda, is of country pursuits, pastimes,^ 
superstitions, and rustic love. As to the reception by the public 
of the Shepherd's Week., Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Gay, says : — 
' The effect of reality and truth became conspicuous even when 
the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded. These 
pastorals became popular, and were read with delight as just repre- 
sentations of rural manners and occupations by those who had na 
interest in the rivaliy of the poets nor knowledge of the critical 
dispute.' 

* Warton's Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (1756). 



7^ VIEW OF LITERATI/RE AND ART. [book i. 

Is thus paraphrased — 

Ye nymphs of Solyma ! begin the song ; 
To heavenly themes subHmer strains belong. 
The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades, 
The dreams of Pindus and the Aonian maids 
Delight no more, — O Thou my voice inspire 
Who touch'd Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire ! 

Of the bucolic or Georgic poem of ' Windsor 

1713. Forest/ it has been justly observed that the descrip- 
tions of scenery and objects, with few exceptions, 
want distinctness and individuality. Amongst the 
exceptions, however, will come the lines — 

See from the brake the whirring pheasant springs, 
And mounts exulting on triumphant wings : 
Short is his joy, he feels the fiery wound, 
Flutters in blood and panting beats the ground. 
Ah ! what avail his glossy varying dyes. 
His purple crest and scarlet-circled eyes, 
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold, 
His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold ! 

The ' Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day ' was an 
early production of Mr. Pope, and would probably- 
rank higher than it does as a lyric poem were it not 
so open to comparison with the ' Alexander s Feast * 
of Dryden, whose manner Pope has imitated. In the 
well-known ' Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate 
Lady,' the poetry is superior to the merit of the 
subject. 

17 14. The ' Rape of the Lock, a heroi-comical poem,* 
the subject and occasion of it being a questionable 
piece of gallantry on the part of Lord Petre, was 
welcomed by the applause of readers of every class. 
Unexceptionable in its versification, this poem dis- 



CHAP. III.] POETRY. 77 

plays marvellous Invention and the finest wit ; being 
characterised by Addison as merum sal. It com- Rape of 
bines the machinery of the sylphs In the happiest _jneru?n 
manner with humorous narrative and playful satire. ^^^' 
The ' Epistle of Elolsa to Abelard ' (Included Eloisa. 
among Mr. Pope's collected poems In 171 7) Is said, 
In the argument of the poem, to have been written 
from original letters of the lovers, ' which give so 
lively a picture of the struggles of grace and na- 
ture, virtue and passion.' With great harmony of 
numbers, It has more reality, and contains a more 
vivid expression of passionate feeling, than occur In 
any other of his productions. In a letter to Martha 
Blount (about 1716), Mr. Pope says of this poem : 
* The " Epistle of Elolsa " grows warm, and begins 
to have some breathings of the heart In It, which 
may make posterity think that I was In love.' 

The translation of ' Homer' — 'a pretty poem, but 
not Homer,' according to the judgment of Bentley, 
occupied about ten years of the poet's lifetime. 
The first three books of the ' Dunclad ' appeared In The 
1728, and the fourth some years later.^ In this re- 

^ It is with reference to the Dimciad that the following jeic 
d' esprit^ by Henry Fielding, was given in the Covent Garden 
Jour7ial (1752) : — ' He (Dryden) died in a good old age, possessed 
of the kingdom of Wit, and was succeeded by king Alexander, 
surnamed Pope. This prince enjoyed the crown many years, and 
is thought to have stretched the prerogative much farther than his 
predecessor. He is said to have been extremely jealous of the 
affections of his subjects, and to have employed various spies, by 
whom, if he was informed of the least suggestion against his title, 
he never failed of branding the accused person mth the word 
dunce on his forehead in broad letters ; after which the unhappy 
culprit was obliged to lay by his pen for ever, for no bookseller 



7^ VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book r. 

markable work Mr. Pope gives full scope to his 
satirical vein, mingling some general with more of 
personal, and often coarse, satire ; using all the 
weapons of an excursive and brilliant fancy, and all 
the power of words, to harass and confound his ad- 
versaries and the scribblers of the day. The ' Essay 
on Man,' In four books, was addressed to Henry St. 
John, Lord Bolingbroke, and Is not considered one 
of his best efforts. Full of metaphysical morality, 
what Is true In It was not new, and what was ap- 
parently new Is more so In the sound than the sense. 
The ' Epistles ' to various persons, and the two 
' Dialogues ' were written at different times ; the 
more direct Imitations of Horace being written late 
In life, and chiefly by way of relaxation. 

It will be seen from this reference to the writings 

Pope's of Pope, that they divide mostly Into two classes ; 

t\vo^^^ ^ <^^^' critical, didactic, and satirical ; the other, poems 

kinds. Qf imagination and passionate sentiment. The first 

of these classes, in which are Included the ' Essays ' the 



would venture to print a word that he wrote. He did indeed put 
a total restraint on the liberty of the press, for no person durst 
read anything which was writ without his license and approbation ; 
and this license he granted only to four during his reign, namely, 
to the celebrated Dr. Swift, to the ingenious Dr. Young, and to 
Dr. Arbuthnot and to one Mr. Gay, four of his principal courtiers 
and favourites. But without diving any deeper into his character, we 
must allow that king Alexander had great merit as a writer, and his 
title to the kingdom of Wit was better founded at least than his 
enemies have pretended,' Pope's timely countenance afforded to 
Thomson and Aikenside are recorded instances of the reignii>g 
poet's good-nature, which Fielding would perhaps have accounted 
for as displayed towards writers not interfering with that province 
of poetry which Pope regarded as his own by prerogative. 



CHAP. III.] POETRY. 79 

' Epistles/ and the ' Diinciad/ have for their subject- 
matter, criticism, taste, ethics, society and manners ; 
and, however varied the illustrations, and harmonious 
and pointed the verse, they are really more akin to 
very clever prose than to poetry — sermoni propiora. 
But, like Horace with his Satires and his Odes, Pope 
can take his stand also upon poetical compositions of 
quite another kind, as the ' Epistle of Eloisa to 
Abelard,' ' Rape of the Lock,' and shorter pieces, in 
which he has displayed powers both of imagination 
and sentiment or feelino- ; imamnation beincr more 
conspicuous in some, sentiment in others.^ 

In 1738, while Pope was still alive, Samuel John- Johnson" 
son, wrote his ' London,' and ten years after, his ^-oj^^^of 
' A'anity of Human Wishes,' the one in imitation of Juvenal, 
the third, the other of the tenth satire of Juvenal. 
Both are full of well applied parallels and modern 
instances. The imagery and illustration contained 
in these poems is striking and original ; as poetical 
compositions they occupy a middle place between 
translation and original writing. The ' Vanity of 
Human Wishes ' is considered superior to the other, 
not only in the versification, which is pointed and 
vigorous, but in the design and the sense ; its excel- 

* It must have been no inconsiderable triumph to the admirers 
of Pope when Dr. Joseph Warton, who first raised the question as 
to his poetry, after a thorough review of the poet's works extend- 
ing through two voha-mes, arrived at the conclusion, hardly war- 
ranted by his premises, that Mr. Pope ought to be placed — not 
in the same rank with Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, but 
' considering the correctness, elegance, and utility, of his works, 
the weight of sentiment and the knowledge of man they contain, 
that he ought to have a place assigned him next to Milton and 
just above Dryden.' — Warton's Essay on Pope, vol. ii., ad fin. 



So VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

lence being no doubt partly due to the superiority 
of the tenth satire of Juvenal to the third. The 
following lines are an example of the application of 
Juvenal's satire to the times of Lord Chesterfield 
and the Pelhams : — 

Unnumbered suppliants crowd Preferment's gate, 

Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great ; 

Delusive Fortune hears th' incessant call, 

They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall. 

On ev'ry stage the foes of peace attend. 

Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their end. 

Love ends with hope ; the sinking statesman's door 

Pours in the morning worshippers no more. 

For growing names the weekly scribbler lies. 

To growing wealth the dedicator flies ; 

From every room descends the painted face, 

That hung the bright Palladium of the place, 

And smoked in kitchen, or in auctions sold, 

To better features yields the frame of gold ; 

For now no more we trace in every line 

Heroic worth, benevolence divine. 

Aken- Akenside's ' Pleasures of Imagination,' a didactic 

Pleasures pOGiTi in blank verse, appeared in 1744, and his 
nadoiT^^ ' Odes ' in the following year. As compared with 
the Odes of Collins and Gray, the merit of Akenside's 
lyric poetry is not of a high order. The ' Pleasures 
of Imagination ' contains some very poetical pas- 
sages of illustration and description, but it deals too 
much in philosophy and theory, and the style is often 
obscure. Reasoning and analysis, although ex- 
pressed in eloquent verse, belong to the domain of 
logic rather than of poetry.^ 

^ Two poems of this time^ Glover's Leoiiidas {1737), in the 
classical manner, correct and cold, and Armstrong's Arf of Pie- 



CHAP. III.] POETRY. 8 1 

In the direction of satirical poetry mention should 
be made of the slashing diatribes of the Rev. Charles Satirical 
Churchill, of London, which were poured forth upon churchiU. 
the town with great exuberance in the first three 
years of the reign of George III., during the ad- 
ministration of the Earl of Bute. Among the most 
noted of these satires were the ' Rosciad,' in which, 
profiting by his playhouse experience, he attacks 
unmercifully the London actors of the day, including 
Garrick and Quin ; the ' Prophecy of Famine,' in 
which Lord Bute's compatriots are bespattered, with 
some humour and more invention ; the ' Ghost,' a 
desultory performance in four books, in octo-syllabic 
measure, touching on all current topics, including 
the Cock-lane Ghost, and lashing Dr. Johnson 
under the name of Pomposo ; and the ' Epistle to 
Hogarth ' the painter, hardly to be equalled for 
venomous personality. The ' North Briton,' a peri- 
odical paper in the writing of which Mr. Wilkes was 
assisted by Churchill, had waged war upon Hogarth, 
who in retaliation published the well-known por- 
trait of Wilkes, of his own engraving ; this being 
the immediate cause of Churchill's ' Epistle.' Ho- 
garth's rejoinder was the equally well-known por- 
trait of ' The Bruiser, Charles Churchill (once the 
Reverend), in the character of a Russian Bear.' 

With some redeeming passages of character- 
sketching and illustrative imagery, the satirical poems 
of Churchill owe their chief reputation to fearless 



seming Health (1744), didactic and good in its kind, may be 
classed among the works of the poetcz minores. 



82 V/EJV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

Strength of invective, clothed in rough though 
vigorous verse. They appear to affect the manner 
of Dryden in preference to that of Pope ; but their 
personaHty and abusiveness forbid them ranking 
high as poetry.^ Cowper in his ' Table Talk,' has 
these lines upon Churchill : — 

If brighter beams than all he threw not forth, 
'Twas negligence in him, not want of worth. 
Surly and slovenly and bold and coarse. 
Too proud for art, and trusting in mere force ; 
Spendthrift alike of money and of wit. 
Always at speed and never drawing bit. 
He struck the lyre in such a careless mood. 
And so disdained the rules he understood ; 
The laurel seemed to wait on his command — 
He snatched it rudely from the Muses' hand. 

Returning to a purer stream of poetry, we discover 

one of its spring-heads in the ' Seasons ' of Thom- 

Original SOU. The son of a Scotch country clergyman, with 

TlTom-^ 3. classical education and an early formed taste for 

^^^ the poetical aspects of nature, Thomson took with 

him to London in 1725 the manuscript of his 

* Winter,' which he was encouraged to produce the 

following year in print.^ ' Summer,' ' Spring,' and 

^ Churchill died as Goldsmith's poem of the Traveller was 
passing through the press ; the dedication thus characterising 
Churchill : — ' Him they dignify with the name of poet ; his tawdry 
lampoons are called satires, his turbulence is said to be force, and 
his phrenzy fire.' Churchill and his poetry have recently under- 
gone a process of whitewashing by Mr. John Forster, in his 
Biographical Essays, reprinted from the Edinburgh Review. 

2 Dr. Joseph Warton, in the second part of his Essay on Pope, 
says that the Winter lay a long time neglected, till Mr. Spence 
made honourable mention of it in his Essay on the Odyssey, which 



son 
Seasons. 



CHAP. III.] POETRY. '^Z 

' Autumn ' followed. A collected edition of the 
* Seasons ' was then published in quarto by subscrip- 
tion, Pope subscribing for three copies. •'^ 

Before many years passed, it was generally ac- 
knowledged that in Thomson an original poet, both 
as regarded matter and style, had appeared ; his 
blank verse occasionally too swelling and his epi- 
sodes not always in the best taste, but drawing his 
inspiration directly from nature, rising often to the 
sublime, and animating his descriptions by touches of 
sentiment and fancy. His poem of' Liberty,' which Liberty. 
was written after a tour on the continent with the 
son of Lord Chancellor Talbot, travels over ancient 
Greece and Rome and their belongings to Britain, and 
is more didactic and commonplace than his ' Castle Castle of 
of Indolence.' Adopting the Spenserian manner lence" 
of allegory as well as the stanza of Spenser, the ^^46. 
' Castle of Indolence ' is a highly imaginative pro- 
duction. The vein of sentiment that pervades it is 
refined and original, and the verse harmonious. 

becoming a popular book, made the poem known. The poetical 
merit of \k\.Q, Seaso7is was pointed out by Warton himself in 1756, 
in the first part of his Essay on Pope. Many years after^ Mr. 
Wordsworth, in the supplement to his preface to the Lyrical 
Ballads {Works ^ iii. 333), remarked that, ' excepting i\iQ Nodurfial 
Reverie of Lady Winchelsea, and a passage or two in the Windsor 
Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period intervening between the 
publication of the Paradise Lost and the Seaso7is does not con- 
tain a single new image of external nature, and scarcely presents 
a familiar one from which it can be inferred that the eye of the 
poet had been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his 
feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine 
imagination.' 

^ Lives of the Poets ^\\\. 230. 

G 2 



84 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

Had Thomson restricted his imitation of Spenser 
to the measure and allegory, and not also Imitated 
occasionally his antiquated forms of words, which the 
richness and growth of the English language In his 
own day made quite unnecessary, his poem might, in 
some portions of it, have gained in point of diction. 
On the ' Seasons ' the reputation of Thomson chiefly 
rests, as the author of a work original In its kind, 
and suggestive of a more sensuous and less artificial 
sort of poetry than that of the school of Pope.^ 

The following stanzas from the second canto of 
the ' Castle of Indolence,' referring to the training 
and achievements of the ' Knight of Industry/ is a 
fair example of Thomson's manner In this poem : — 

At other times he pried through Nature's store, 
Whate'er she in th' ethereal round contains, 
Whate'er she hides beneath her verdant floor, 
The vegetable and the mineral reigns : 
Or else he scann'd the globe, those small domains. 
Where restless mortals such a turmoil keep, 
Its seas, its floods, its mountains, and its plains ; 
But more he search'd the mind, and roused from sleep 
Those moral seeds whence we heroic actions reap. 

Nor would he scorn to stoop from high pursuits 
Of heavenly truth, and practice what she taught ; 
Vain is the tree of knowledge without fruits ! 
Sometimes in hand the spade or plough he caught. 
Forth calling all with which boon Earth is fraught ; 
Sometimes he plied the strong mechanic tool, 
Or rear'd the fabric from the finest draught ; 
And oft he put himself to Neptune's school. 
Fighting with winds and waves on the vex'd ocean pool. 

^ Thomson's Plays do not fall to be noticed here. In his 
masque of Alfred is the national anthem Rnk Britminia. 



CHAP. III.] POETRY. 85 

To solace then these rougher toils, he tried 
To touch the kindling canvas into life ; 
With Nature his creating pencil vied, 
With Nature joyous at the mimic strife; 
Or, to such shapes as graced Pygmalion's wife, 
He hew'd the marble ; or, with varied fire, 
He roused the trumpet and the martial fife, 
Or bade the lute sweet tenderness inspire. 
Or verses framed that well might wake Apollo's lyre. 

Accomplish'd thus he from the woods issued, 

Full of great aims, and bent on bold emprise ; 

The work, which long he in his breast had brew'd. 

Now to perform he ardent did devise ; 

To wit, a barbarous world to civilise. 

Earth was till then a boundless forest wild ; 

Nought to be seen but savage wood, and skies ; 

No cities nourish'd arts, no culture smiled, 

No government, no laws, no gentle manners mild. 
♦ * * * 

It would exceed the purport of my song. 
To say how this best sun from orient climes 
Came beaming life and beauty all along. 
Before him chasing indolence and crimes. 
Still as he pass'd, the nations he sublimes, 
And calls forth arts and virtues with his ray : 
Then Egypt, Greece and Rome their golden times 
Successive had ; but now in ruins grey 
They lie, to slavish sloth and tyranny a prey. 

To crown his toils, Sir Industry then spread 
The swelling sail, and made for Britain's coast. 
A sylvan life till then the natives led, 
In the brown shades and greenwood forest lost, 
All careless rambling where it liked them most : 
Their wealth the wild-deer bouncing through the glade, 
They lodged at large, and lived at Nature's cost. 
Save spear and bow, withouten other aid ; 
Yet not the Roman steel their naked breast dismay'd. 



S6 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

Here, by degrees, his master-work arose, 
Whatever arts and industry can frame : 
Whatever finish'd Agriculture knows, 
Fair queen of arts ! from heaven itself who came, 
When Eden flourish'd in unspotted fame : 
And still with her sweet innocence we find. 
And tender peace, and joys without a name. 
That, while they ravish, tranquillize the mind ; 
Nature and Art at once, delight and use combined. 

The towns he quicken'd by mechanic arts, 
And bade the fervent city glow with toil ; 
Bade social Commerce raise renowned marts. 
Join land to land, and marry soil to soil. 
Unite the poles, and, without bloody spoil. 
Bring home of either Ind the gorgeous stores ; 
Or, should despotic rage the world embroil, 
Bade tyrants tremble on remotest shores. 
While o'er th' encircling deep Britannia's thunder roars. 

The drooping Muses then he westward call'd 
From the famed city by Propontic sea, 
What time the Turk th' enfeebled Grecian thrall'd ; 
Thence from their cloister'd walks he set them free, 
And brought them to another Castalie, 
Where Isis many a famous nursling breeds ; 
Or where old Cam soft-paces o'er the lea. 
In pensive mood, and tunes his Doric reeds. 
The whilst his flocks at large the lonely shepherd feeds. 

Ramsay's Although the * Gentle Shepherd ' of Allan Ram- 
Shep-^ say (father of Ramsay the portrait-painter) is en- 
^^^^- titled a ' Pastoral Comedy,' it is rather a poem 
than a play. This poetical production is original 
in its kind, in ten-syllable rhyming verse, and in 
the Scottish dialect. The training and education 
of Ramsay (in his later life a bookseller in Edin- 



CHAP. III.] POETRY. ^7 

burgh) were entirely Scotch, out of the sphere of 
the influence of Pope. His smaller pieces, mostly 
of a local interest, were collected and published by 
subscription at Edinburgh by Ruddiman in 1720. 
The * Gentle Shepherd' appeared in 1725, with 
a dedication to the Countess of Eglinton. It soon 
became popular, not only in Scotland, but in 
London and Dublin. Unlike the conventional 
style of pastoral poetry derived from Theocritus 
and Virgil, and differing also from the ' Shepherd s 
Week ' of Gay, the tendency of which is to give an 
altogether low and ridiculous view of rustic life, it 
describes the simple manners of the better class of 
Scottish peasantry after the period of the Resto- 
ration : but the language must be understood in 
order to appreciate the skill with which the poet 
heightens his delineation of rustic character by 
touches of comic archness, sometimes broad but 
without vulgarity, and refines his view of peasant 
life by tender sentiment. Some may think that the 
passion of love is kept under better regulation than 
consists with a high degree of passionate feeling ; 
but the dialogue is never tiresome, nor the incidents 
far-fetched or incredible. From its thorough vitality 
and skilful representation of rural manners and senti- 
ment, the ' Gentle Shepherd ' lays claim to a fair 
position in British poetry. 

The poetry of the Rev. Dr. Edward Young is Dr. E. 
varied and copious. His satires on the love of fame poetry. ^ 
in the several relations of life, collected under one 
title, ' The Universal Passion,' appeared between 
1725 and 1728, prior to Pope's satirical epistles. 



^S VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK I. 

They are imitations of the manner, but without the 
depth of meaning, of Horace and Juvenal, display- 
ing considerable felicity of illustration, epigrammatic 
and pointed in their drawing of character. More 
originality and poetic feeling is shown in his * Last 
Day' and ' Force of Religion,' a poem on Lady 
Night Jane Grey. His ' Night Thoughts,' a poem travel- 
1742- ^ ^i^g^ excursively over the verges of life and death, 
1746. ^^^ dealing with the most important points of re- 
ligious belief and duty, came out at intervals in nine 
books or * Nights,' each book being dedicated to 
some person of consequence, from Speaker Onslow 
to the Duke of Newcastle. This remarkable poem 
was written in a time of domestic affliction, and 
displays great though unequally applied powers of 
reflection, imagination, and passionate sentiment. It 
is tinged, however, by a certain tone of discontent, 
- arising probably from the delay of that preferment 
Young was always supposed to be seeking, which 
rather interferes with the effect of the pathos. And 
in the continued recurrence to the same melancholy 
topics, in the laboured antitheses and dazzling 
points, in his use of conventional phraseology, as 
Cynthia and Philomel, and (for his deceased step- 
daughter and her husband) Narcissa and Philander, 
too evident symptoms appear of an affectation of 
desolation, just as if the author had Indited his verses 
by the light of the gift sent him by the Duke of 
Wharton — a human skull, with a ca^idle set in it. 
The poem Is in blank verse, which was most cu' table 
to Its expatiating character.^ 

^ In one of his prose writings. The Centaur not Fabulous, Dr. 
Young, referring to the shifting scene of human Hfe, asks, * Where 



CHAP. III.] POETRY. 89 

Much inferior in quantity but superior in quality to 
the productions of Dr. Young is the lyric poetry of 
William Collins. His literary career, short and me- Lyrics of 
lancholy, partially lighted by the dimly-descried rays 
of a posthumous fame, is well known through bio- 
graphy. His oriental or Persian Eclogues, a juvenile 1742. 
composition, are very sweet pastorals in the conven- 
tional manner, with not much either of orientalism 
or of individuality in the imagery and sentiments. 
His ' Odes on several Descriptive and Allegorical 
Subjects,' amongst which were some of his finest 
lyrics, appeared in a modest little volume. It is 1747. 
a slur on the poetical taste of his time that the 
odes of Collins were long neglected and unread ; 
and Dr. Johnson's so-called criticism on them in his 
' Life of Collins ' is a blot in his great work. They 
have since taken their place as lyric poetry of the 
highest order. In point of beautiful and striking 
imagery, of sensibility carried into the region of 
allegory, and of varied and harmonious verse, the 
Odes to Memory, to Pity, to Fear, to Liberty, 
on the Death of Thomson, and on the Supersti- 
tions of the Highlands of Scotland -are sufficiently 
remarkable ; but the ' Ode on the Passions' may be Their 
regarded as second to nothing in the English Ian- lunation!" 
guage for its vivid personation, lyrical fervour, and 
diction at once forcible, appropriate, and polished.^ 

is that world into which we were bom ? ' a thought Lord B}T:on 
has thought worthy of improving upon : — 

Where is the world ? cries Young at eighty ; where 

The world in which a man was born ? Alas ! 
Where is the world of eight years past ? 'Twas there — 
I look for it, 'tis gone— a globe of glass ! 

^ The ode of ColHns, On the Poetical Character^ is too abstract 



90 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [BOOK i. 

The passions of Fear, Anger, and Despair are 
disposed of in the following lines with wondrous 
power and brevity : — 

First Fear his hand, its skill to try, 
Amid the chords bewilder'd laid, 
And back recoil'd, he knew not why, 
E'en at the sound himself had made. 

Next Anger rush'd; his eyes on fire, 
In lightnings own'd his secret stings : 
In one rude clash he struck the lyre, 
And swept with hurried hand the strings. 

With woeful measures, wan Despair, 
Low, sullen sounds, his grief beguiled ; 
A solemn, strange, and mingled air, 
'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild. 

Gray ^^ '^^^ 'y^^^ poetry of Thomas Gray displays genius 
of no ordinary kind — not so remarkable perhaps as 
the genius of Collins, which only a thin partition 
divided from madness — but most carefully cultivated. 
A man of refinement and fastidious taste — a scholar 
living at Cambridge among his books, writing Latin 
poetry almost from his cradle — Gray's first English 
oblation to the muses was the ' Ode on the Prospect 
of Eton College.' The odes on Spring and on Ad- 
versity followed. The ' Elegy written in a Country 
Churchyard ' having first found its way into a maga- 

perhaps, for poetry ; but it is fair to remark what is said for it by- 
Mr. Coleridge : * An author is obscure when his conceptions are 
dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect or inappropriate or 
involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, like the Bard of 
Gray, or one that personates high and abstract truths, like Collins's 
Ode on the Poetical Character, claims not to be popular, but should 
be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the reader.' 



CHAP. III.] POETRY. • 91 

zine, was published In small quarto in 1751, a fourth 
edition appearing the same year. In point of beau- 
tiful imagery and refined delicacy of sentiment, most 
readers will prefer the earlier poems, especially the 
Elegy, whose elaborate simplicity is in the highest His 

Elcgrv 

degree artistic, to his Pindaric odes, the * Progress &c. 
of Poetry' and ' The Bard,' which appeared together, 'o m?' 
in a quarto form. They were first printed at Pindaric 
Horace Walpole's press at Strawberry Hill, with an 1757. 
appropriate motto from Pindar — ^oivdvra. ^uvstokti 
(vocal to the initiated) prefixed. Imbued with the 
spirit of Pindar and the choral poetry of the Greek 
tragedy. Gray has in these odes addressed himself 
to the intellect rather than to the feelings, and his 
recondite allusions are often beyond ordinary com- 
prehension. ^ 

^ ' These two odes of Gray (said Dr. Goldsmith) breathe much 
of the spirit of Pindar, but they have caught the seeming obscurity, 
the sudden transition and hazardous epithet, of his mighty master ; 
all which, though evidently intended for beauties, will probably be 
regarded as blemishes by the generality of his readers. In short, 
they are in some measure a representation of what Pindar now 
appears to be, though perhaps not what he appeared to the states 
of Greece, when they rivalled each other in his applause.' — Monthly 
Review, i757- 

In a letter to Mr. W. Taylor How on the odes of their mutual 
friend Gray (December 1762), the Italian critic. Count Algarotti, 
makes the following pertinent observation : — ' It appears to me 
that, generally speaking, the poetry of the northern nations con- 
sists more of thoughts- than of images, delights itself in reflections 
as much as in sentiments, and has not so much individuaHty and 
picturesqueness as our poetry.' — 'La poesia dei popoli settentrionali 
pare a me, che, generalmente parlando, consista piii di pensieri che 
d' imagini, si compiaccia delle riflessioni egualmente che dei senti- 
menti, non sia cosi particolareggiata e pittoresca come e la nostra.' 
— Mason's Life and Works of Gray. Appendix. 



92 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK I. 

In the ' Shipwreck ' of Falconer defect of imagi- 
nation and poetic illustration is in a great mea- 
sure supplied by truthfulness of description and 
1762. natural pathos.^ About the same time appeared 
the * Ossianic poetry ' of James Macpherson, the 
question as to the originality of which gave rise 
to a long feud in the world of letters. There is 
reason to believe that Macpherson did obtain frag- 
ments of Celtic poetry, chiefly from oral sources in 
the Highlands of Scotland, which he ingeniously 
expanded into the full-blown shape they assume in 
the * Poems of Ossian.' The imagery is of a wild 
and general character, and wants the individuality of 
real imagery. The bombastic sublimity of Ossian's 
poems is said to have delighted the first Napoleon, 
some of whose proclamations and addresses may be 
thought to show a little of their manner.^ 

^ To this poem is due the following from Mr. Coleridge, Ad- 
dressed to a Lady, with Falconer^ s ' Shipwj-eck : ' — 

Ah ! not by Cam or Isis, famous streams, 
In arched groves, the youthful poet's choice ; 

Nor while half-listening, 'mid delicious dreams. 
To harp and song from lady's hand and voice, 

Nor yet while gazing in sublimer mood. 

On cliff, or cataract, in Alpine dell. 
Nor in dim cave, with bladdery sea-weed strew'd, 

Framing wild fancies to the ocean's swell ; 

Our sea-bard sang this song ! which still he sings. 

And sings for thee, sweet friend ! Hark, pity, hark ! 

Now mounts, now totters, on the tempest's wings, 
Now groans, and shivers, the replunging bark ! 

Cling to the shrouds ! In vain ! The breakers roar — 
Death shrieks ! With two alone of all his clan 

Forlorn the poet paced the Grecian shore, 
No classic roamer, but a shipwreck'd man ! 

2 About the year 1760 James Macplierson was private tutor to 



CHAP. III.] POETRY, 93 

Dr. Joseph Warton, better known as a critic than 
as a poet, brought out a small volume of ' Odes on 
several subjects,' of which the * Ode to Fancy' may 
be regarded as the best. His poetry seems to derive 1746. 
its inspiration partly from the lyric poetry of Milton, 
and evidences a careful and loving observation of 
the beauties of nature. The poetry of his brother, 
Thomas Warton, is more varied in its character. Its Poetry 
versification and description of rural scenery appears wartons. 
to connect with the poetry of the 19th century more 
than with that of the i8th. 

The following lines occur in the commencement 
of an ode addressed by Thomas to Joseph Warton, 1750. 
on the latter quitting his residence of Wynslade 
near Basingstoke, to accompany the Duke of Bolton 
abroad : — 

When morn's pale rays but faintly peep 
O'er yonder oak-crowned airy steep, 
Who now shall climb its brows to view 
The length of landscape, ever new. 
Where summer flings, in careless pride, 
Her varied vesture far and wide ! 
Who mark, beneath, each village charm, 
Or grange or elm-encircled farm ; 

the late Lord Lpiedoch, then Thomas Grseme, at Balgowan in 
Perthshire. In a volume of letters relating to the family of Bal- 
gowan, printed by the late Robert Graham, Esq. and John Dun- 
das, Esq., of Edinburgh, it is stated in one of the letters, on the 
authority of Lady Christian Graeme, Lord Lynedoch's mother, 
that ' Mr. Macpherson, during his stay with them, w^hich was 
between three and four years, made frequent excursions into the 
Highlands, and ahvays returned with fresh ballads w^hich he had 
learned, and many written fragments.' — p. 70. 



94 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART [book i. 

The flinty dovecote's crowded roof, 
Watched by the kite that sails aloof ; 
The tufted pines whose umbrage tall 
Darkens the long-deserted hall ; 
The veteran beech that on the plain 
Collects at eve the playful train ; 
The cot that smokes with early fire, 
The low-roofed fane's embosom'd spire ! 

The Dr- Goldsmith's poem of the ' Traveller, or a 

ierTnci P^ospect of Society,' appeared in 1 764, with a dedi- 
Deserted catlon to his brother, the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, 

Village ^ ^ -^ 

of Gold- whose amiable character has furnished the original 
of some of the poet's happiest sketches. The 

1769. * Deserted Village ' was dedicated to Goldsmith's 
well-tried friend. Sir Joshua Reynolds. In these 
highly-finished examples of melodious verse, not 
differing too remotely from the ideas of poetical 
composition then prevailing, the sketches of scenery 
and character, the picturesque allusions, reflec- 
tions and sentiments, mingled in about equal pro- 
portions, present themselves so agreeably, that the 
* Traveller ' and the * Deserted Village ' became 
at once, and have always continued, popular fa- 
vourites.^ 

In the year after that which witnessed the success 
of the ' Deserted Village ' came out in London the 

1770. first part of the ' Minstrel, or the Progress of 

^ It may be an omission not to refer in the text to the per- 
formances of Thomas Chatterton, the ' marvellous boy,' whose 
alleged ' poems of Rowley ' came out in 1 769. The premature fate 
of this poet has been a subject of melancholy interest to his 
admirers in more recent times, who have thrown over his faults 
the cloak of mental alienation. 



CHAP. III.] POETRY. 95 

Genius,' by Dr. James Beattie, the second part fol- Beattie's 
lowing soon after. In this poem there is a visible 
reality in the representations as well of external ob- 
jects as of emotion and feeling ; it is in fact the 
transcript of a mind of great sensibility, trained in 
the solitude of a Scotch rural parish, and keenly 
alive to the beauties of natural scenery. The poem 
is in the Spenserian measure, and, with very little 
incident, contains many fine passages breathing pure 
and elevated sentiment.^ 

The first volume of the poetry of William Cowper, Poetry of 
containing ' Table Talk,' * Charity,' and other pieces 
of a religious character, with some smaller poems, 
appeared in 1782, with a preface by his friend Mr. 
Newton, rector of Olney. These and the succeeding 
poems of Cowper were written in the period follow- 
ing recovery from a long mental malady, and partly 
with the view of combating by constant employment 
his tendency to dejection of spirits.^ The motto 
from the ^neid placed on the title-page of this 
volume indicates the almost fitful variety of topics 
of which its poetry consists : — 

Sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis 
Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine lunse, 
■ Omnia pervolitat late loca ; jamque sub auras 
Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti — 

^ Dr. Beattie thus adverts to this poem in one of his letters : — 
' Not long ago I began a poem in the style and stanza of Spenser, 
in which I propose to give full scope to my inclination, and be 
either droll or pathetic, descriptive or sentimental, tender or 
satirical, as the humour strikes me j for, if I mistake not, the 
measure Vv'hich I have adopted admits equally of all these kinds 
of composition.' ^ Hayley's Life of Cowper., i. 147. 



96 VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

As water trembling in a polished vase 
Reflects the beam that plays upon its face ; 
The sportive light, uncertain where it falls, 
Now strikes the roof, now flashes on the walls. 

Table This volume of poetry appears not to have 

^'^' made much impression. It was rather serious read- 
ing, and the versification was not so smooth and 
polished as the poetry of the old standard. It was 
The not till the publication of the ' Task ' that people 

greater were aware of a poet of Imagination and sensibility 
Son^^^' ^^^ ^ vigorous thinker — however some might differ 
made from hIs Speculative opinions — having come before 
them In print The 'Task' is divided Into six books, 
entitled the 'Sofa/ the ' Time-piece,' the * Garden,'^ 
&c. The topics range over a wide variety of sub- 
jects — many of them novel In poetical compositions 
— touching on modern manners and their conse- 
quences, public institutions, arts, English rural 
scenery, domestic occupations, and religion. In the 
treatment of this complex and rather unconnected 
theme Cowper draws on his own observation, and 
brings to bear great powers of description as well as 
of argument, ridicule and pathos. His descriptions 
are all from nature, and his delineations of feeling 
are from his own experience, not borrowed from 
books.'^ The rhythm of the blank verse, expressive 

^ The first suggestion of this poem was by Cowper's friend 
Lady Austen, who had been soliciting him to try his powers in 
blank verse ; and when he requested her to furnish a subject, 
' Oh,' she replied, ' You can never be in want of a subject, you 
can write upon any; write upon this sofa.' — Hayley's Life, i. 135. 

^ Southey's Life of Cowper, ii. 186. 



CHAP. III.] POETRY. 97 

and Idiomatic, was better than the rhyming lines, 
often harsh and unmusical, of Cowper's previous 
productions. 

Some of his poems of less pretension, as * The John 
Diverting History of John Gilpin,' have long de- how^^' 
lighted readers of all ages. In reference to the writ- ^"f^^^ 
ing of this humorous ballad, we are told by Hayley 
that the poet's friend, Lady Austen, observing him on 
one occasion sinking into dejection of spirits, told him 
the story of John Gilpin (which had been treasured 
in her memory from her childhood), to dissipate the 
gloom of the passing hour. Its effect on the fancy 
of Cowper was like enchantment. He informed 
her the next morning that convulsions of laughter, 
brought on by his recollection of her story, had kept 
him waking during the greater part of the night, 
and that he had turned it into a ballad ! ^ ' John 
Gilpin ' appeared first in the ' Public Advertiser ' 
newspaper. 1782. 

Cowper's translations of the * Iliad ' and 'Odyssey,' 
in blank verse, with which the later years of his life 
were occupied, adhere more closely to the original 
than the translations of Pope, but fail equally in 
rendering Homer. 

1 Li/e of Cowper, ii. 128. 



i 



H 



9^ V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 



CHAPTER IV. 

P O Y.'Y'^:S:—co7itinited. 

Original Poetry of Btirns, of Crabbe, of Bowles, connecting 
the Poetry of the \Zth century with that of the i()th — 
Poetry of the Delia Cr us cans — Gifford's Baviad and 
Mceviad — Mathias' Purstcits of Literature — Poems of 
Samuel Rogers and others. 

While Cowper's verse was illustrating the life and 
manners of England, strains of poetry of another 
kind, equally original and of purer melody, sounded 
unexpectedly from beyond the Tweed. Robert 
Poems of Burns, the rustic bard of Ayrshire, published the 
Burns. ^^^^ edition of his * Poems, chiefly in the Scottish 
Dialect,' by subscription, at Kilmarnock, in 1 786. In 
the preface to this edition Burns says of himself, — 
* Unacquainted with the necessary requisites for 
commencing poet by rule, he sings the sentiments 
and manners he felt and saw in himself and his 
rustic compeers around him, in his and their native 
language.' He modestly refers at the same time to 
Allan Ramsay (the ' Gentle Shepherd'), and to 
Ferguson (author of a volume of poems of consider- 
able merit), as ' two justly admired Scottish poets 
he has often had in his eye in the following pieces, 
but rather with a view to kindle at their flame than 
for servile imitation.' The poems were cordially 



CHAP. IV.] POETRY. 99 

received In the country, and in December of the 
same year were greeted with a flattering notice in 
the * Lounger/ an Edinburgh periodical, from the 
pen of Henry Mackenzie, author of the ' Man of 
FeeHng,' equally creditable to that gentleman's 
benevolence and his discernment. In the literary 
world Mackenzie was the first to hail Burns as * a 
genius of no ordinary rank.' Encouraged by these 
signs of favour, the poet brought out a second 
edition of his poetry, at Edinburgh, in the following 
spring, and a third edition in the same year, in 
London. The verse of Burns was almost entirely 
drawn from his personal experience of life ; an expe- Mostly 
rience coloured by strong feeling, and occasionally founded 
amplified by a vigorous fancy beyond the region of sonal ex- 
fact. His descriptions of scenery were Inspired by 
the ' genius of the place,' and his amatory lyrics by 
the fair objects of his admiration. ' Neither the 
subjects of his poems' (says Mr. Wordsworth, In his 
' Letter to a friend of Burns'), ' nor his manner of 
handling them, allow us long to forget their author. 
On the basis of his human character he has reared 
a poetic one, which, with more or less distinctness, 
presents Itself to view in alm.ost every part of his 
earlier verses.* 

With some deductions from its merit in respect of 
occasional harshness of Invective and coarseness of 
gallantry, and of a few pardonable outbursts of an 
intractable spirit, made more Intractable by habits of 
intemperance In later life, the poetry of Burns is 
recognised as of a high, if not of the highest order. 
Even should we not admit the apology sometimes 

H 2 



lOO VIE IV Oh LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

made for the irregularities of genius, in literature as 
well as in life — 

But yet the light that led astray 
Was light from heaven — 

the greater proportion of the poems of Burns are of 
a stuff that redeems the qualifying matter ; for while 
mankind shall take pleasure in poetry possessing the 
Their qualities referred to by Milton, of being * simple, 
sensuous, and passionate,' and at the same time 
lighted up with the play of fancy, so long will his 
poetry retain its hold over the national mind. 
Although such pieces as the * Cotter's Saturday 
Night,' 'Halloween,' and ' Tam o'Shanter' (one of 
the latest of his considerable poems), are deservedly 
popular from their characteristic sketches of manners 
and their humour and fancy, there is in the lyrics — 
both those of a lofty strain, as the ' Scots wha hae 
wi' Wallace bled' and the songs of sentiment — so 
much powerful pathos and liveliness of imagery, that 
upon these alone the poet's reputation might safely 
rest. 

In addition to what appeared in the earlier edi- 
tions, some of the finest lyrical pieces of Burns were 
published in the ' Scot's Musical Museum,' which 
was commenced in 1787 by James Johnson, and in 
Thomson's * Collection of Original Scottish Airs, 
with Select and Characteristic Verses,' begun In 
1 792. In the songs communicated to the * Museum,' 
to which his name was not usually affixed, Burns 
was less careful than in his compositions for the 
larger work of Thomson, to which he contributed 



CHAP. IV.] POETRY. lOI 

about sixty original songs.^ The object of both 
these pubHcations was to unite the music of Scot- 
land and its songs (re-written when deemed ad- 
visable) in one general collection, on a similar plan 
to what was subsequently adopted in the case of the 
' Irish Melodies/ 

Of an entirely different stamp from the lyrics 
of Burns is the poetry, original also in its man- 
ner, of the Rev. George Crabbe. His first poem, Crabbe's 
* Inebriety,' in three parts, was published at Ips- ^^^^^' 
wich in 1775. The 'Library' — 'the soul's best 
cure in all her cares ' — next appeared ; and the 
author informs us that while composing it he 
had the benefit of Mr. Burke's advice and cor- 
rections.^ This was followed by the ' Village ' 1783- 
and the ' Newspaper,' of which the first was re- 
vised by Dr. Johnson, who pronounced it to be 
' original, vigorous, and elegant' After the lapse 
of more than twenty years, the ' Parish Register,' 
perhaps the most characteristic of the works of 
Crabbe, appeared in a collected edition of his 
works, with a dedication to Lord Holland. The 
reverend author was not yet out of leading strings, 
the preface intimating the ' Parish Register ' to have 
had the approval, if not revision, of Mr. Fox. This 
preface also very complacently acknowledges the 
great amount of encouragement now afforded to 
literary merit ; and refers to the debt of gratitude 
Mr. Crabbe owed to Lord Thurlow and to the Duke 



^ Currie's Works of Burns, iv. 269 ; Lockhart's Life of Bur jis. 
2 Preface to Crabbe's Poems, 1807. 



I02 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

of Rutland, whose chaplain he had been, for his 
church-preferment. In this edition were included 
two shorter pieces, in eight-syllable verse, ' Sir 
Eustace Grey,' a tale of madness, sufficiently striking 
and imaginative ; and the ' Hall of Justice,' a Gipsy 
story of unnatural vice, but appealing more to the 
emotions of pity and hope than is usual with 
Crabbe. 

In the poems of the ' Village,' the ' Parish Re- 
1783- gister,' the 'Borough,' and the ' Tales of the Hall,' the 
idiosyncrasy of Mr. Crabbe as a poet is most clearly 
manifested. The ' Village,' of which the scenes and 
personages form a perfect contrast to those of 
' Auburn,' and the ' Parish Register,' more methodi- 
cally than poetically divided into three books of 
Births, Marriages, and Deaths, contain powerful 
Their delineations of rural life, chiefly in its forbidding as- 
binpaln- pects, when clouded by sordid poverty, vice, and 
^"^ tlons uncontrolled passion. The scenes and characters de- 
scribed have too strong an impression of painful 
reality to require illustration by figurative language. 
Their colouring is probably heightened beyond the 
average truth of English life, by the circumstance of 
Crabbe's parish residences on the east coast of Eng- 
land being situate in ill neighbourhoods in point of 
manners and morals, and from the turn of Crabbe's 
own mind inclining him to dwell upon the harsher 
features of peasant life and character. His principal 
works, regarded as poems, may be considered de- 
fective in elevated feeling and imagination ; and his 
lines are often prosaic in structure and language. 
His stern delineations, though not destitute of that 



CHAP. lY.] POETRY. 



pathos arising from pictures of wretchedness, appeal 
rather to the intellect than the sensibility, and are 
seldom suggestive of topics of consolation and hope.-^ 
The dates, at least, of the poetry of Crabbe con- 
nect the 1 8th century Avith the present century. 
Perhaps a finer link in the chain that connects the 
poetry of the two eras is to be found in the sonnets 
of the Rev. W. Lisle Bowles. The first edition of Sonnets 
his sonnets appeared in 1791 ; and the author has Bowles. 
been careful to inform us that they were in general 
suggested by scenes of travel, visited during various 
excursions undertaken to relieve depression of spirits, 
caused by a disappointment in early affections. 
There is an apparent reality and pathos in the 
description and sentiment that may account for the 
popularity of the sonnets, although now they derive 
their chief interest from having to some extent sug- 
gested the more powerful song of Coleridge and 
Wordsworth.^ The subject of the following is the 
river Wainsbeck, in Northumberland : — 

While sloAvly wanders thy sequester'd stream, 
Wainsbeck, the mossy-scatter'd rocks among, 

^ Mr. Wordsworth, remarking on one of his l}Tical ballads, 
Lucy Gray, observes — ' The way in which the incident was treated, 
and the spirituahsing of the character, might furnish hints for 
contrasting the imaginative influences which I have endeavoured 
to throw over common life with Crabbe's matter-of-fact style of 
handling subjects of the same kind. This is not spoken to his 
disparagement, far from it ; but to direct the attention of 
thoughtful readers to a comparison that may enlarge the circle of 
their sensibilities, and tend to produce in them a cathohc judg- 
ment.' — Memoirs of IV. Wordstuo^'t/i, by Dr. Christopher Words- 
worth, i. 134. 

^ Vide post. p. 129. and Wordsworth's Soiuicfs. 



I04 VIEJV OF LITERATURE AND ART, [book i. 

In fancy's ear making a plaintive song 
To the dark woods above, that waving seem 
To bend o'er some enchanted spot, removed 

From life's vain coil ; I listen to the wind. 

And think I hear meek Sorrow's plaint, reclined 
O'er the forsaken tomb of him she loved ! 
Fair scenes, ye lend a pleasure long unknown 

To him who passes weary on his way ; — 

Yet recreated here he may delay 
Awhile to thank you ; and when years have flown. 
And haunts that charm'd his youth he would renew, 
In the world's crowd he will remember you. 

For upwards of half a century after the appear- 
ance of his sonnets, Mr. Bowles continued to write 
poetry, and also to dispute upon it with Lord Byron 
and others. When he does not attempt too high a 
flight, his poems are pleasing, and sustain his juvenile 
reputation. His 'St. John in Patmos,' ' Song of the 
Cid,' * Village Verse-book,' and ' Childe Harold's 
Last Pilgrimage,' are among the most noteworthy. 

A sufficiently amusing episode in the progress of 
British poetry towards the close of the i8th century 
would be left unnoticed, were no mention made of 
the once celebrated Delia Cruscan school. Its tem- 
porary popularity furnishes an instance how the 
public taste in poetry may go astray, when there is 
no ruling spirit in literature or criticism to call 
The attention to its vagaries. The Delia Cruscan versi- 

Cniscans. fyi^^g began with a literary coterie who assembled at 
the house of a certain Lady Miller of Bath-Easton, 
near Bath, and gratified themselves and their friends 
by inditing and occasionally publishing poetical effii- 
sions. To their set belonged Mr. William Merry, 



CHAP. IV.] POETRY. 105 

alias Delia Crusca, Miss Anna Seward, Mrs. Thrale 
(married In 1781 to the music-teacher Piozzi, whom 
she accompanied to Florence), Mr. Anstey, Dr. 
Darwin, Cowper s friend Hayley, and Dr. Sedgwick 
Whalley.^ ' They hold,' says Horace Walpole, in a 
letter of the year 1775, *a Parnassus-fair every 
Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the 
flux of quality at Bath contend for the prizes. A 
Roman vase, dressed with pink ribbons and myrtles, 
receives the poetry, which Is drawn out every fes- 
tival ; six judges of these Olympic games retire and 
select the brightest compositions, which the respec- 
tive successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope 
Miller, kiss her fair hand, and are crowned by It 
with myrtle.' The following letter from Lady Miller 
to Dr. Whalley ^ may be given as characteristic : — 

Bath-Easton Villa : Nov. 3, 1780. 

A continuance of your elegant poetical favours is earnestly 
requested against the 21st of next month ; the subject, 
'Delays are Dangerous.' I give you the earliest notice 
possible, and beg you will not refuse the assistance of your 
charming muse on the first day of opening the Vase for the 
winter season. . . . Excuse the hurry I write in, for this is 
the fifteenth letter I have written this day, and dinner 
waits. I am, &c. 

Anna Miller. 

The Bath-Easton circle gradually extended itself 
As regards taste in literature, they were sentimental 

^ Anstey's JVew Bath Guide (1766), a clever satire on Bath 
society, is rather above the pitch of the other poetry of the Delia 
Cruscans ; and the same may be said of Darwin's Botanic Garden 

(1789). 

2 Journals and Correspondence of Dr. Scdgivick Whalley^ p. 315. 



io6 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book I. 



Their 
poetry. 



admirers of Italy and the recent Italian poetry. 
The more wealthy occasionally travelled. In 1785 
a party of them met at Florence, writing sonnets 
and canzonettas, chiefly in praise of one another and 
of their Italian friends ; and so fervid was the 
impulse then given to their muse, that on returning 
to England they formed a school of poetry of their 
own, with the productions of which the London 
press teemed for several years. The chief scribblers 
were Mr. Robert Merry, who assumed the appellation 
of Delia Crusca, Mr. Bertie Greathead alias Arno, 
John Williams alias Tony Pasquin, Mrs. Robinson 
a//<^j" Julia, and a host of Edwins, Anna Matildas, &c. 
The infection spread among all ranks, attacking 
both writers and readers.; until at last, in 1791, 
William Gifford, afterwards well known as critic 
and reviewer, produced his well-timed satire, the 
' Baviad,'and in 1795 the ' Mseviad,' both couched in 
vigorous though not very polished verse, with in- 
Maeviad. Productions and notes. These satires professed to be 
imitations respectively of the first satire of Persius, 
and the tenth satire of the first book of Horace. 
Delia Crusca and his friends were severely rated 
and ridiculed, both in the verse and the notes — a 
castigation and exposure from which they never 
recovered.^ 



Gifford's 

Baviad 

and 



^ As a specimen of the Delia Crnscan versification may be 
taken the following, by ' Edwin ' (Mr. T. Vaughan), On the cir- 
cumstance of a mastiff's running furiously towards two young 
ladies, and upon coming up to them becoming instantly gentle and 
tractalde : — 

When Orpheus took his lyre to hell 
To fetch his rib away, 



CHAP. IV.] POETRY. 107 

In the following passage of the ' Baviad ' Mr. 
Merry (Delia Crusca) is introduced going to a tea- 
party at Mrs. Piozzi's to read his poem — ' The 
Wreath of Liberty ' : — 

Lo, Delia Crusca, in his closet pent ! 

He toils to give the crude conception vent. 

Abortive thoughts that right and wrong confound, 

Truth sacrificed to letters, sense to sound ; 

False glare, incongruous images combine, 

And noise and nonsense clatter through the line. 

'Tis done. Her house the generous Piozzi lends. 

And thither summons her blue-stocking friends. 

The summons her blue-stocking friends obey. 

Lured by the love of poetry — and tea. 

The bard steps forth in birth-day splendour drest, 

His right hand graceful waving o'er his breast ; 

His left extending, so that all might see 

A roll inscribed ' The Wreath of Liberty : ' 

So forth he steps, and with complacent air 

Bov/s round the circle and assumes the chair; 



On that same thing he pleased so well, 
That devils learned to play. 

Besides, in books it may be read 

That, while he swept the lute, 
Grim Cerberas hung his savage head, 

And lay astoundly mute. 

But here we can with justice say 

That nature rivals art, 
He sang a mastiff's rage away. 
You looked one through the heart. 

Delia Crusca himself strikes a bolder note in a rhapsody ad- 
dressed, 2d? Mrs. Robi7iso?i, on her not openi?ig her eyes : — 

Conjure up demons from the main, 
Storms upon storms indignant heap, 
Bid ocean howl and nature weep. 
Till the Creator blush to see 
How horrible his world can be ; 
While I will glory to blaspheme, 
And make the joys of hell my theme. 



Io8 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book i. 

With lemonade he gargles first his throat, 
Then sweetly preludes to the liquid note, 
And now 'tis silence all. ^ Genius or Muse ' — 
Thus, while the flowery subject he pursues, 
A wild delirium round th' assembly flies ; 
Unusual lustre shoots from Emma's eyes. 
Luxurious Arno drivels as he stands. 
And Anna frisks, and Laura claps her hands. 

Satire by The ' Pursuits of Literature,' another satire in 

thias. verse on the poetry and literary productions of the 
time (by Thomas James Mathias, but anonymous), 

1794-97- appeared in four books or dialogues. Dealing sum- 
marily and sharply with the ' celebrities ' of the 
day, it ran through seven editions before the end of 
the century — a measure of success the book hardly 
deserved, whether regarded as a poem or as a 
critical work. The verse is accompanied by a com- 
mentary in the form of ' notes,' lashing nearly all 
contemporary literature — especially novels and works 
favourable to French democracy — with unsparing 
hand.^ 

Before quitting the i8th century, the poetry of 

Poems of Samuel Rogers may be referred to. Mr. Rogers 
began to write in 1 786, when his ' Ode to Super- 
stition,' perhaps the most poetical of all his produc- 
tions, appeared along with some smaller pieces. He 
is said to have drawn his first inspiration from the 
perusal of Beattie's ' Minstrel.' His ' Pleasures of 

^ T. J. Mathias, who held a government office, was an accom- 
plished Italian scholar. He wrote and published a quantity of 
Italian poetry, original and translated, and also some odes in 
English ; but these writings are now consigned to the same limbo 
where rest most of the subjects of his satire. 



CHAP. TV.] POETRY. 109 

Memory' came out in 1792, and is one of the last 
regular pieces in the manner of Pope and Boileau. 
Mr. Rogers wrote afterwards a good deal of poetry, 
' The Voyage of Columbus, * Jaqueline,' and ' Human 
Life,' not now much read. * Italy,' the best of his 
later works, appeared in 1822. Coming after the 
fourth canto of ' Childe Harold,' the descriptive 
sketches and historical allusions in this work, adorned 
as they are with tasteful sentiment and dressed in 
elegant verse, fall somewhat tamely on the ear. 
The popularity of ' Italy ' and the ' Pleasures of 
Memory ' has been much assisted by the beautiful 
engraved designs from the pencils of Stothard and 
Turner.^ 



* Towards the end of the last and beginnmg of the present 
century a variety of poetical pieces issued from the press, as to 
which opinions may differ how some of them, particularly the 
later, deserve to rank as poetry. Such are the poems of Gray's 
friend Mason, the most noted of which were his Heroic Epistle 
to Sir W. Chambers^ and Odes to Sir Fletcher Norton and Others^ 
written under the assumed name of Malcolm MacGregor of 
Knightsbridge, Esq. ) the Rolliad^ Probationary Odes for the 
Laureateship, by Dr. French Lawrence, John Townshend, and 
George Ellis \ the poems of Peter Pindar (Dr. John Wolcot), the 
best of which are the Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians 
(1782-17 87), his other effusions being of an exceptionable and 
scurrilous character; Sir Martin Shee's Rhymes of Art (1805) and 
Elemefits ofArt', the Tales of Wonder of Matthew Lewis (1801) ; 
Bloomfi eld's Farmer's Boy, a realistic transcript of country scenery 
and occupations, without much poetic feeling; the Sabbath of 
James Graham, homely in style, but truthful and vivid in sentiment 
and description ; the poetry of Bernard Barton the Quaker, of 
Henry Kirke White, of Bishop Heber, and of James Montgomery. 
Proceeding (as already observed) on a principle of critical selec- 
tion, this survey of British poetry may possibly leave unnoticed 
some productions of merit belonging to a border or debateable 
region of poetry. 



no 



CHAPTER V. 

VOY.T'KY— continued. 

British Poetry, pursuing the new direction in which it had 
been tending, bases itself on a Theory — Influence of the 
study of German Literature — Poetry of the disciples of 
the new School — Of Wordsworth — Its Treatment by the 
Edinburgh Review — Poetry of Coleridge — Poems of 
S out hey — Of Wilson, and others. 

Decline We have Seen during the course of the i8th century 

classical the influence of the artificial though brilHant poetry 

vance^of ^^ Pope, and of what is sometimes called (with 

the ro- ^QQ little consideration for Eng^lish orig^inality) the 

mantic , ^ ^ •' ' 

school of French school, gradually subsiding, and poetry of a 
less hackneyed kind, applying itself more to the in- 
terpretation as well of external nature as of human 
sympathies, gradually advancing. To use a phrase- 
ology adopted in modern criticism, the classical style 
of poetry had been receding, and the romantic style 
advancing. The latter had been making its way 
slowly, like the irregular waves of the tide, but it 
came now to assume a habitation and a name in the 
poetical theories of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and 
to display itself without reserve in the British poetry 
of the present century. The causes (in addition to 
the suggestive poetry of such writers as Thomson, 
Cowper, Burns, and Bowles) which have influenced 



CHAP. V.J POETRY. 



I II 



this new direction of poetical taste, it is difficult 
exactly to fix upon. 

Whatever weight one may be inclined to allow to Causes 
causes historical, or connected with civilisation, much ing the 
depends, in 'literature as well as in the arts, upon the rection of 
accidental or providential appearance on the world's po^ticai 
stage of individuals of genius and talent. Exclu- 
sive, however, of this consideration, there concurred, 
in the present instance, several circumstances in con- 
nexion with the literary and political history of the 
period, which both gave expression to the tendency 
of the national feeling and influenced to a consider- 
able extent the growing change in the character of 
British poetry. The ' Jacobite,' and other popular 
ballads of Scotland and the north of England, 
together with a considerable amount of poetry, rude 
perhaps and provincial, but of a stirring and 
romantic cast, current among the people In the 1 8th 
century, were an expression of the national feeling 
in its varieties of humour, indignation, ridicule, and 
pathos, essentially distinct from the poetry of the 
classical school. The appearance in 1765 of Percy's 
* Reliques of Ancient English Poetry ' ^ (some of 
the fine ballads in which were new modelled by 
Dr. Percy himself), followed In 1802 by the ' Border 
Minstrelsy' of Scott ^; and the re-publication and 

^ Whatever may be said of the school of criticism prevalent in 
the early part of the i8th century, it is to the credit of Addison 
that, in the Spectator (1711, Nos. 70 and 74), he recognises the 
ballad of Chevy Chase as ' extremely natural and poetical, and 
full of the majestic simplicity which we admire in the greatest of 
the ancient poets.' 

2 The Scotch literary antiquaries, of most authority, as Mr. 



112 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

somewhat indiscriminate lauding of the works of the 
early English dramatists, all aided the direction of 
the public mind in favour of a more picturesque and 
emotional kind of poetry. 

The effect must also be noted which was pro- 
duced by the study of the new German literature 
which had sprung into existence, mostly identified 
with the writings of Wieland, Schiller, and Goethe. 
Burger and other Germans had been zealously study- 
ing English literature, especially Shakespeare ; and 
had been avowedly imitating the ballads in Dr. 
Percy's collection. Goethe, in his early life, was 
spell-bound by Shakespeare and by Goldsmith's 
* Vicar of Wakefield,' and he afterwards very can- 
didly acknowledged the influence they had exer- 
cised over him.^ Following upon this in Germany, 
there was a reaction of the German literature on 
the literature of Britain, manifesting itself not only 
in translations but in imitations of the tone and 
manner of German works. 

There is every reason also to suppose that political 
causes aided in giving an additional impulse to the 
new direction of English poetry, by encouraging the 
appetite for stronger excitement of all kinds, engen- 
dered by the spirit-stirring events consequent on the 
French Revolution. 

David Laing, and Mr. R. Chambers, appear to have come to the 
conclusion that a considerable portion of these popular Scottish 
ballads are of more recent authorship than is usually supposed, 
being in all probability not older than the early part of the i8th 
century. See also Craik's English Literature and Language^ 
ii. 291. . 

^ Goethe's Dichtung unci Wahrheit, 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 113 

The most famous disciple of the new school of 
poetry was William Wordsworth ; although, with 
the poets that have been already referred to pre- 
ceding him, it is impossible to regard his poetical 
efforts (as some are inclined to do) in the light of a 
regeneration of English poetry. The first poem of Early 
Mr. Wordsworth that came before the public, was ^o^^g.^ 
an ' Evening Walk,' addressed ' to a young lady.' worth. 
The lady to whom this piece is addressed was Miss 
Dorothea Wordsworth, sister of the poet, and of a 
disposition congenial with his own. The subject is 
the Cumberland Lake country. At a late period 
of life Mr. Wordsworth remarks that ' there is not 
an image in this poem which he had not observed ; 
noting at the same time, that the country was 
idealised rather than described in any of its local 
aspects.' ^ In the same year appeared ' Descriptive 1793, 
Sketches taken during a pedestrian tour among the 
Alps,' addressed to a college friend who had accom,- 
panied him. Both these poems are in ten-syllable 
rhyming verse ; the couplets in the ' Descriptive 
Sketches ' frequently recalling the ' Traveller ' of 
Goldsmith. 

As w^as the case with many generous spirits of 
that time, the opinions and feehngs of Mr. Words- 

^ Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by Dr. Christopher Words- 
worth (now Bishop of Lincoln). In the remarks referred to in 
the text, Mr. Wordsworth quotes the following as an instance of 
the truthful imagery of this poem ; — 

Waving his hat, the shepherd from the vale 
Directs his wandering dog the cliffs to scale ; 
The dog, loud barking, 'mid the glittering rocks 
Hunts, where his master points, the intercepted flocks. 

I 



114 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [BOOK I. 



worth were strongly enlisted in favour of the French 
Revolution at its commencement ; and this sympathy 
is easily discovered in the ' Sketches/ as well as in 
some other early pieces. His later poems touch- 
ing on political subjects show his opinions to have 
decidedly, but with a tempered moderation, changed 
in after life. Neither the ' Evening Walk ' nor the 
' Descriptive Sketches ' attracted much public atten- 
tion ; though Mr. Coleridge observes of the latter, 
with which he became acquainted at Cambridge, 
that ' seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an 
original poetic genius above the literary horizon 
more evidently announced.'^ 

The ' Lyrical Ballads' first saw the light in 1798, 
at Bristol, in the form of a small duodecimo. Among 
them were included certain poems by Coleridge, 
who was now the friend and literary ally of Words- 
worth. A second edition of the ' Lyrical Ballads ' 
soon appeared in two volumes, the new volume con- 
taining additional poems by Mr. Wordsworth. In 
the preface to this edition, a systematic defence is 
' Theory ' put forward of ' the theory upon which these poems 
wh^ch were written.' '^ The principal object proposed is 



Lyrical 
ballads. 



^ Biographia Literaria. 

^ This preface is printed at the end of the second volume of 
Wordsworth's Works ^ edition 1836. The poems of Mr. Words- 
worth are now so scattered and classified, out of their chrono- 
logical order, in the various editions of his works, that it is of 
some interest to note the contents of the first edition (1798) of 
the celebrated Lyrical Ballads. They are as follows : — The 
Rime of the Ancient Mariner (by Mr. Coleridge) ; The Foster- 
Mother's Tale (by Coleridge) ; Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree 
near the Lake of Esthwaite ; The Nightingale (by Coleridge) ; The 



written. 



CHAP. V.J POETRY, 115 

alleged to have been ' to choose incidents and situa- they were 
tions from common life,' and to relate or describe 
them, as far as possible, in language really used by 
men in a state of vivid sensation, and at the same 
time to throw over them a certain colouring of 
imagination, whereby ordinary things should be pre- 
sented to the mind in an unusual aspect. Humble 
and rustic life was preferred for this reason, among 
others, that the essential passions of the heart are 
there under less restraint, and speak a plainer and 
more emphatic language. And the preface con- 
cludes with the author's declaration that ' it was not 
so much his aim to prove that the interest excited 
by some other kinds of poetry is less vivid and less 
worthy of the nobler powers of the mind, as to offer 
reasons for presuming that if his purpose were ful- 
filled, a species of poetry would be produced which 
is genuine poetry, in its nature well adapted to 
interest mankind permanently.' ^ 

Female Vagrant ; Goody Blake and Harry Gill ; Lines written 
near my House, a?id sent by my little boy to the person to whom they 
were addressed; Simon Lee^ the old Huntsman ; Anecdote for 
Fathers ; We are Seven; Lines written in early Spring ; The 
Thor?i; The Last of the Flock ; The Dungeon (by Coleridge) ; The 
mad Mother ; The Tdiot Boy ; Lines written near Richmond upon 
the Thames, at evening; Expostulation and Reply ; The Tables 
Turned; Old Man Travelling; The Complaint of a forsakeii Lndia7i 
Woman; The CoJivict; Lines written a few miles above Tintern 
Abbey. 

^ Mr. Coleridge, in his Biographia Literaria, states the Lyrical 
Ballads to have been ' an experiment, whether subjects which 
from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and extra-colloquial 
style of poems in general, might not be so managed in the lan- 
guage of ordinary life as to produce the pleasurable interest 
■which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart.' 

I 2 



II 6 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART f [book I. 

Before going farther, a doubt may be expressed 

whether this ' theory ' of Mr. Wordsworth, or (what 

is of more importance) the practice in accordance 

with it, was so entirely original ; considering that a 

portion of the poetry referred to in the preceding 

Practice pages — the English ballad poetry in Percy's collec- 

corda'nce ^^^n, the ' Border Minstrelsy,' the ' Gentle Shepherd ' 

with It of Qf Ramsay, and the poetry of Burns, fulfils very nearly 

poets. its conditions. It is quite possible that as Monsieur 

Jourdain discovered that he had been speaking prose 

all his life without knowing it, those earlier poets 

who never wrote upon any theory have been all the 

time making ' genuine ' poetry according to the 

Wordsworthian creed, without being aware they 

were doing so. 

However this may be, Mr. Wordsworth continued 
to write and print at intervals, for more than thirty 
years after the appearance of his ' Lyrical Ballads,' 
a great amount of various poetry ; most of it re- 
markable for ' the union of deep feeling with pro- 
found thought' In some of his earlier poems, he 
may have carried too far his view of idealising and 
elevating low and trivial characters, incidents and 
1798. situations ; as in ' Goody Blake and Harry Gill,' 
and the ' Idiot Boy.' But in several of those pieces 
which have been most exposed to the ridicule of 
critics, including ' Peter Bell ' and the ' Waggoner ' 
(which are perhaps too much drawn out and elabo- 
rated in Cantos and Parts), there are many beauties 
of a peculiar kind — ^a fine observation of natural 
objects and phenomena, and appeals to common 
feelings and sympathies — which should at least have 



CHAP, v.] 'POETRY. 117 

blunted, if not averted, the shafts of dogmatical 
criticism. It is believed, however, to be now gene- 
rally acknowledged, that the best of Mr. Words- 
worth's productions are those in which his theory 
of making use, for the most part, of the incidents 
and language of low or of common life, has been 
practically modified by his own cultivated taste and 
elevated tone of feeling. 

The general character of Mr. Wordsworth's General 
poems is, that they are poetry at first hand, not ofWords 
conventional, or taken from ' others' books.' The poetry^ ' 
scenes in which he lived, the characters and people 
he encountered in his walks — it might be a stray 
child, a crazy beggar-woman, or an ' old man travel- 
linof ' — the incidents that occurred in his own life and 
that of his friends, all supplied him with subjects for 
his muse. To say that such subjects and topics 
received a colouring from his imagination, and a 
new life from his own mind (which has sometimes 
been objected as a fault to the poetry of Words- 
worth), is no more than saying that they were 
regarded by him and treated with the eye and 
genius of a poet. It is no impeachment of Mr. 
Wordsworth's originality of observation, that his 
sister, Miss Wordsworth, the inmate of his family 
circle, occasionally ' saw for him ; ' several of his 
poems (as stated by his biographer), 'being little 
more than poetical versions of her descriptions of 
the objects which she had seen, he treating them as 
seen by himself'-^ Nor is it any impeachment of 

^ Memoirs, by Dr. C. Wordsworth, i. 180, 188. INIr. Words- 
worth's habits of out- door observation and study influenced so 



tl8 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

his general originality, that in a few poems — as the 
' Complaint of the forsaken Indian Woman,' the 
' Russian Fugitive,' ' Laodamia,' and ' Dion ' — of his 
later writing, he has adopted the perfectly legitimate 
course of taking his theme from travels or history. 

At a comparatively early period of his poetical 
career Mr. Wordsworth had planned and partly 
composed a poem on a large scale, of which the 
' Excursion ' was the only portion given to the 
public in his lifetime. In a letter to Sir George 
1804. Beaumont, he refers to this poetical labour, which 
was to be two-fold ; first a poem to be called the 
' Recluse ' (called afterwards the ' Excursion,') ' in 
which it will be my object to express in verse my 
most interesting feelings concerning man, nature, 
and society, and next, a poem (in which I am at 
present chiefly engaged) on my earlier life, and the 
growth of my own mind, taken up on a large scale.' 

The Pre- This poem on his early life, the * Prelude,' not 

lude. . ^ 1 -11 1 

prmted or even named till the year 1850, was pro- 
ceeded with at intervals, and extended to fourteen 
books. The following lines from it, referring to the 
poet's marriage in 1802, may be quoted as an 
example of its style : — • 

When every day brought with it some new sense 
Of exquisite regard for common things, 

much the character of his poetry, that the following anecdote 
may be given, in his own words ; — ' One day a stranger, having 
walked round the garden and grounds of Rydal Mount, asked of 
one of the female servants, who happened to be at the door, per- 
mission to see her master's study. " This," said she, leading 
him forward, " is my master's library, where he keeps his books ; 
but his study is out of doors.'" — Memoirs, ii. 76. 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 119 

And all the earth was budding with these gifts 

Of more refined humanity, thy breath, 

Dear sister, was a kind of gentle spring 

That went before my steps. Thereafter came 

One whom with thee friendship had early paired : 

She came no more a phantom to adorn 

A moment, but an inmate of the heart, 

And yet a spirit there for me enshrined 

To penetrate the lofty and the low ; 

Even as one essence of pervading light 

Shines in the brightest of ten thousand stars 

And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp 

Couch'd in the dewy grass. 

In 1807 appeared two additional volumes of 
' Poems by William Wordsworth, author of the 
" Lyrical Ballads." ' These volumes contained short Shorter 

,, . 1 . pieces. 

miscellaneous pieces and sonnets, poems written 
during a tour in Scotland, as ' Rob Roy's Grave,' 
' Stepping Westward,' ' Yarrow Unvislted,' besides 
certain short poems entitled ' Moods of my own 
Mind.' In the later editions of his works Mr. 
Wordsworth has arranged these along with his other 
poems under distinct heads as ' Poems of the Affec- 
tions, of the Imagination, Description, &c.' This 
classification is interesting in some respects, but 
upon the whole not satisfactory ; too little regard 
being paid to the chronological order, and to the 
course of the poet's life as explanatory of his writings. 
Among the finest of the poems of this time are 
the 'Affliction of Margaret' and the 'Feast of 
Brougham Castle ; ' the first of these being marked 
by a simple pathos and beauty of language in which 
there is no trace even of the affectation of vulgarity. 



I20 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

' Since the year t 798, when the first volume of 
the '' Lyrical Ballads " was published, there appears,' 
says Mr. Wordsworth's biographer, ' to have been a 
steady though not an eager demand for his poetical 
works.' His admirers, although ardent, were few in 
number. On the other hand, he had many powerful 
enemies, whose hostility was provoked by the 
vitality of his reputation. Their contemptuous 
criticisms of his poetry exercised a decided influence 
over a large portion of the public ; and it was prob- 
ably owing in some measure to those strictures 
that during the first quarter of the present century 
no wide-spread appreciation existed in England of 
Wordsworth's poetry. 

His longest and most laboured production is the 
The Ex- ' Excursion,' a poem in blank verse, half-narrative, 
half-didactic, containing much animated description 
of the scenery of the Lake district, its inhabitants 
and belongings, and great store of argument, sen- 
timent and reflection. The principal characters are 
an old packman or pedlar, poetically termed ' the 
Wanderer,' very pious and philosophical ; a non- 
descript individual, of sceptical notions in religion 
and politics, styled 'the Solitary;' and a sensible 
and well-informed Pastor of the Church of England. 
The ' Wanderer ' and the ' Solitary ' had both their 
archetypes in real life. The various discourse of 
those persons on Providence, faith, virtue, and other 
lofty themes, interspersed with sketches of places 
and natural phenomena, forms the staple of the 
poem. The ' Excursion,' after a long period of 
probation, has now taken a place in English litera- 



cursion. 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 121 

ture corresponding to its high aims as a descriptive 

and didactic poem. 

Mr. Jeffrey's criticism on the 'Excursion' in the Criticism 
. , . . . of the 

' Edinburgh Review ' (reprinted in his collected Edin- 

* Contributions ') was remarkable for its severity ; Review 
setting the poem down as bearing the stamp of the "^^^ ^^^ 
author's peculiar system, and as ' longer, weaker, and 
tamer than any of his other productions, with less 
boldness of originality, and less even of that extreme 
simplicity and lowliness of tone which wavered so 
prettily in the '' Lyrical Ballads " between silliness 
and pathos. ' ^ The ' Excursion,' regarded as a 
poem, undoubtedly has its faults and weak points ; 
but looking back from the stand-point of the present 
day to the strictures of the ' Edinburgh Review ' in 
the year 1814 and previously, directed against this as 
well as the other poetry of Mr. Wordsworth, one 
cannot avoid remarking a variation in the verdict of 
posterity from Mr. Jeffrey's judgments. The truth 
is that Wordsworth's poetry was not amenable to 
those pre-conceived opinions and rules of criticism 
which Jeffrey applied to it.^ The intellectual natures 
of the two men were entirely different ; and the 
learned critic, with all his acuteness and analytical 
reasoning, could no more enter into or indeed com- 
prehend the poet's mode of thought, feeling and 
expression, than he could have raised himself upon 
wings. 

1 Jeffrey's Contributions to Edinbicrgh Review, p. 585 (edition 

1855)- 

2 See Hazlitt's remarks, in the Spirit of the Age, as to Mr. 
Jeffrey's criticism on the Lyi'ical Ballads. 



122 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK I. 

Late ap- It was a considerable time before the poetry of 

precia- 

tion Wordsworth was what may be termed tinderstood 

worth. " by a large proportion of his countrymen. 

When Southey's read and Wordsworth understood — 

was the sentiment of many besides Lord Byron. 
Mr. Wordsworth appears to have felt this himself 
and to have been somewhat uneasy at the criticism 
he had to encounter, if we may judge from the de- 
precatory tone of an essay written in 1815/ as a 
supplement to the Preface to the ' Lyrical Ballads ' 
above referred to. 'In the higher poetry,' says this 
essay, ' an enlightened critic chiefly looks for a re- 
flection of the wisdom of the heart and the grandeur 
of the imagination. Wherever these appear, sim- 
plicity accompanies them.' Farther on he adds — 
' To be mistaught is worse than to be untaught ; and 
no perverseness equals that which is supported by 
system, no errors are so difficult to root out as those 
which the understanding has pledged its credit to 
uphold.' Reviewing then the early history of certain 
poetical works of now recognised merit, which had 
been at first neglected or unpopular, Mr. Words- 
worth arrives at the conclusion (previously suggested 
by a remark of Mr. Coleridge) ' that every author, 
as far as he is great and at the same time original, 
has had the task of creatirig the taste by which he is 
to be enjoyed.'^ 

^ Printed at the end of the third volume of his Works^ 1836. 

2 In a letter to Professor Reed, in 1845, Mr. Wordsworth, 
after speaking favourably of Mr. Tennyson, adds : — ' You will be 
pleased to hear that he expressed in the strongest terms his grati- 
tude to my writings. To this I was far from indifferent, though 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 123 

The ' White Doe of Rylstone ' was pubHshed White 
soon after the ' Excursion,' and Hke its predecessors Rylstone. 
was unmercifully criticised. Whatever ground may 
be thought to exist for some portion of that criticism, 
it is fair to give the author s own theory of this 
poem. After stating the plan of it to have been 
entirely different from poems of action, like those 
of Sir Walter Scott, which have a resting-point 
and termination, he says, ^ — 'Everything that is at- 
tempted by the principal personage in the *' White 
Doe " fails, so far as its object is external and sub- 
stantial ; so far as it is moral and spiritual, it succeeds. 
The heroine of the poem knows that her duty is 
not to interfere with the current of events, either to 

forward or delay them ; but— 

To abide 
The shock, and finally secure 
O'er pain and grief a triumph pure. 

From this period till nearly the close of his life 1850. 
Mr. Wordsworth continued to write and publish 
poetry at intervals. His sonnets are numerous and of Sonnets. 
great variety, — ecclesiastical, on places visited, &c. ; 
some of them exquisitely beautiful. Like Cowper, 
he thought in verse, and his versified thoughts, if 
they did not assume a lengthier shape, usually took 
the form of a sonnet. Thus in a sonnet he apolo- 
gises for writing so many sonnets : — 

persuaded that he is not much in sympathy with what I should 
myself most value in my attempts, viz., the spirituality with which 
I have endeavoured to invest the material universe, and the moral 
relations under which I have wished to exhibit its most ordinary 
appearances.' 

1 Memoirs^ by Dr. C. Wordsworth, ii. 56, 



J 24 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK. i. 

Scorn not the Sonnet ; critic, you have frown'd, 

Mindless of its just honours ; with this key 

Shakespeare unlock'd his heart ; the melody 

Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound ; 

A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound ; 

With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief ; 

The Sonnet glitter'd a gay myrtle leaf 

Amid the cypress with which Dante crown'd 

His visionary brow ; a glow-worm lamp, 

It cheer'd mild Spenser, call'd from Faery-land 

To struggle through dark ways ; and when a damp 

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 

The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew 

Soul-animating strains — alas, too few ! 

As his life advanced Mr. Wordsworth seems to 
have had more recourse for the subjects of his 
higher poetry to reflection and his stores of reading, 
Later ' ancient and modern, and less to personal experience 
and adventure. His Ode, entitled ' Intimations of 
Immortality from recollections of early childhood,' 
is in all respects a noble production. The ' Lines at 
Cora Linn, in sight of Wallace's Tower,' ' The Rus- 
sian Fugitive,' ' Laodamia ' and 'Dion,' in which 
(leaving his personality out of view) the poet treads 
on classic ground, ' The Romance of the Water Lily,' 
where a vein is re-opened of ancient English fiction, 
since pursued by Mr. Tennyson, have, each in its 
way, the ring of genuine poetry. The poems of 
' Peter Bell ' and the ' Waggoner,' written previously, 
and in his early manner, but not published till a 
1819. later period, were at their first appearance more in 
request than some of his other works, but equally 
with them subjected to unsparing criticism.^ 

^ This reception of Peter Bell gave occasion to a characteristic 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 125 

On the death of Mr. Southey, in 1843, the appoint- Poet- 
ment of Poet Laureate was at once tendered to Mr. ship. 
Wordsworth, and after some hesitation accepted by 
him. The following passage in Sir Robert Peel's 
official letter on this subject records not only the 
feeling of her Majesty and the Prime Minister in his 
favour, but is evidence of the general impression 
held at the time of his position as a poet : — 

The offer was made to you by the Lord Chamberlain April 3, 
with my entire concurrence, not for the purpose of imposing ^^43- 
on you any onerous or disagreeable duties, but in order to 
pay you that tribute of respect which is justly due to the 
first of living poets. The Queen entirely approves of the 
nomination, and there is one unanimous feehng on the part 
of all who have heard of the proposal (and it is pretty 
generally known) that there could not be a question about 
the selection. 

Nothing in the way of writing was required of 
Wordsworth as Laureate. He had earned this dis- 
tinction before he received It ; and one fine poem of 
the kind of writing formerly expected from a poet 
laureate, a ' Thanksgiving Ode on the conclusion 
of the w^ar,' had been given to the public In 18 16. 
A fitting opportunity, however, occurred upon the In- 
stallation of H. R. H. Prince Albert as Chancellor of 
Cambridge, in 1847, for the spontaneous exercise of 
his powers. The following Ode, composed by him 
for the occasion, and set to music, does not appear 
in any edition of the works of Mr. Wordsworth : ^ — 

sonnet by the author in its defence, beginning (in imitation of one 
of Milton's sonnets) : — 

A book came forth of late called ' Peter Bell ' ; 

Not negligent the style, the matter good 

As aught that song records of Robin Hood, &c. 

^ The words of this Ode as given in the text are taken from 



126 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK I. 

For thirst of power that Heaven disowns, 

For temples, towers, and thrones, 
Too long insulted by the Spoiler's shock. 

Indignant Europe cast 

Her stormy foe at last 
To reap the whirlwind on a Libyan rock. 

War is passion's basest game. 
Madly play'd to win a name ; 
Up starts some tyrant, Earth and Heaven to dare : 

The servile million bow ; 
But will the lightning glance aside to spare 
The despot's laurell'd brow ? 

War is mercy, glory, fame. 
Waged in Freedom's holy cause ; 
Freedom, such as man may claim 
Under God's restraining laws. 
Such is Albion's fame and glory ; 
Let rescued Europe tell the story. 

But, lo ! what sudden cloud has darkened all 
The land as with a funeral pall } 
The Rose of England suffers blight, 
The flower has droop' d, the Isle's delight. 
Flower and bud together fall — 
A nation's hopes lie crush'd in Claremont's desolate hall. 

Time a checker'd mantle wears ; 

Earth awakes from wint'ry sleep ; 
Again the tree a blossom bears — 
Cease, Britannia, cease to weep ! 
Hark to the peals on this bright May-morn ! 
They tell that your future Queen is born ! 

A Guardian Angel flutter'd 
Above the babe, unseen ; 

the account of the Installation published in July, 1847, the last 
stanza of the Ode, which is expressed widi more fervour than is 
usual in a written composition, being omitted. 



\ 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 127 

One word he softly utter'd — 
It named the future Queen : 
And a joyful cry through the island rang, 
As clear and bold as the trumpet's clang, 
As bland as the reed of peace — 

* Victoria be her name ! ' 
For righteous triumphs are the base 
Whereon Britannia rests her peaceful fame. 

Time, in his mantle's sunniest fold, 
Uplifted on his arms the child ; 
And, while the fearless infant smiled, 
Her happy destiny foretold ; 
* Infancy, by wisdom mild 
Train'd to health and artless beauty ; 
Youth, by pleasure unbeguiled 
From the lore of lofty duty ; 
Womanhood in pure renown. 
Seated on her lineal throne ; 
Leaves of myrtle in her crown. 
Fresh with lustre all their own ; 
Love, the treasure worth possessing 
More than all the world beside, — 
This shall be her choicest blessing, 
Oft to royal hearts denied.' 

That eve the Star of Brunswick shone 

With stedfast ray benign 
On Gotha's ducal roof, and on 

The softly-flowing Leine ; 
Nor fail'd to gild the spires of Bonn, 

And glitter'd on the Rhine. 
Old Camus, too, on that prophetic night 

Was conscious of the ray ; 
And his willows whisper'd in its light, 

Not to the zephyr's sway, 
But with a Delphic life, in sight 

Of this auspicious day. 



T28 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK 

This day, when Granta hails her chosen lord, 

And proud of her award. 

Confiding in that star serene, 
Welcomes the Consort of a happy Queen. 

Prince, in these collegiate bowers, 

Where science, leagued with holier truth, 

Guards the sacred heart of youth, 

Solemn monitors are ours. 

These reverend aisles, these hallow'd towers, 

Raised by many a hand august, 

Are haunted by majestic powers. 

The memories of the wise and just ; 

Who, faithful to a pious trust. 

Here in the founder's spirit sought 

To mould and stamp the ore of thought 

In that bold form and impress high 
That best betoken patriot loyalty. 

Not in vain those sages taught : 

True disciples, good as great. 

Have ponder'd here their country's weal ; 

Weigh'd the future by the past, 

Learn'd how social frames may last, 

And how a land may rule its fate 

By constancy inviolate, 

Though worlds to their foundations reel. 
The sport of factious hate or godless zeal. 

Albert, in thy race we cherish 
A nation's strength that will not perish 
While England's sceptred line 
True to the King of Kings is found ; 
Like that wise ancestor of thine 
Who threw the Saxon shield o'er Luther's life, 
When first, above the yells of bigot strife, 

The trumpet of the Living Word 
Assumed a voice of deep portentous sound, 
From gladden'd Elbe to startled Tiber heard. 



i 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 129 

The first poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge were Early 
published in 1 796 ; a second edition, in which some cole-^ ° 
of the previous poems were omitted and new pieces ^^^^^' 
added, appearing the following year. Among these 
productions are Included the sonnets, the first in 
order of which acknowledges the inspiration he 
owed to the ' soft strains ' of Bowles. The greater 
part of them have as their ingredient more of the 
politics of the day than of the strains of Mr. 
Bowles ; evidencing Coleridge to have been at one 
time Influenced, like his friend Wordsworth, by 
opinions derived from the French Revolution, but 
afterwards much modified by the course of events 
in France and his own reflection. The sonnet on 
the death of Kozciusko is as follows : — 

O what a loud and fearful shriek was there, 

As though a thousand souls one death-groan pour'd ! 

Ah me ! they saw beneath a hireHng's sword 

Their Kozciusko fall ! Through the swart air 

(As pauses the tired Cossack's barbarous yell 

Of triumph) on the chill and midnight gale 

Rises with frantic burst or sadder swell 

The dirge of murder'd Hope ! While Freedom pale 

Bends in such anguish o'er her destin'd bier, 

As if from eldest time some Spirit meek 

Had gather'd in a mystic urn each tear 

That ever on a patriot's furrow'd cheek 

Fit channel found, and she had drain'd the bowl, 

In the mere wilfulness and sick despair of soul ! 

To this period also belong the ' Monody on the 
Death of Chatterton,' the Odes, ' To the departing 
Year,' and ' France,' poems sublime in character, 
fresh and vigorous In their spirit. 



130 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK I. 

In the first volume of Wordsworth's * Lyrical 
Ballads/ Mr. Coleridge's poems of the ' Ancient 
Mariner,' ' Foster-Mother's Tale,' the ' Nightingale,' 
and lines entitled the * Dungeon ' (part of his 
tragedy of ' Remorse'), appeared as anonymous con- 
tributions. In the plan of that collection it was 
agreed that Coleridge's ' endeavours should be di- 
rected to persons and characters supernatural, or 
at least romantic ; yet so as to transfer, from our 
inward nature, a human interest and a semblance 
of truth sufficient to procure for those shadows of 
imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for 
the moment which constitutes poetic faith/ ^ The 
Rime of ' Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' the most original 
Ancient 3-1^^ imaginative of Coleridge's poetical pieces, is 
Manner, (distinguished by a singular mixture of wildness of 
conception and antique simplicity of manner. Power- 
ful imagination is throughout predominant, bodying 
forth the ' forms of things unknown ' with a brilliancy 
almost blinding to the mental eye. The leading 
incident of the poem, the shooting of the friendly 
albatross, will appear an insufficient cause to draw 
after it such a train of appalling consequences, 
unless the reader share that strong sentiment of 
kindliness towards the animal creation and belief in 
the regardful care had of all his creatures by the 
tutelary Spirit of the universe, which is a feature in 
the poetry of Coleridge as of Wordsworth.^ 

^ Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. 

2 The following notice of the Ancient Mariner is contained in 
a letter of the Rev. Alexander Dyce to the late Mr. H. N. Cole- 
ridge; and it is fitting that it be given here, as showing the 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 131 

Mr. Coleridge's tragedy of ' Remorse' was written 
in the last year of the eighteenth century, though 
not then produced on the stage ; a soliloquy in 
it being included among the Lyrical Ballads under 
the title of the ' Dungeon.' The translation of 
Schiller's ^Piccolimini' and ^ Death of Wallenstein ' 
(no translation being attempted of the ' Lager ' or 
first part of the dramatic Trilogy), was made in the 
following winter, after the poet's return from a visit jg^^^ 
to Germany. 

part Mr. Wordsworth had in that remarkable production. Mr. 
Dyce writes : — ' When my truly honoured friend Mr. Wordsworth 
was last in London, he dined with me in Gray's Inn, and made the 
following statement, which I am quite sure I give you correctly : — 
" The Ancient Mariner was founded on a strange dream which a 
friend of Coleridge had, who fancied he saw a skeleton ship with 
figures in it. We had both determined to write some poetry for 
a monthly magazine, the profits of which were to defray the ex- 
penses of a little excursion we were to make together. The 
Ancient Mariner was intended for this periodical, but was too 
long. I had very little share in the composition of it, for I soon 
found that the style of Coleridge and my own would not assimilate. 
Besides the lines in the Fourth Part — 

And thou art long and lank and brown, 
As is the ribb'd sea-sand — 

I wrote the stanza in the First Part — ■ 

He holds him with his glittering eye — 
The wedding-guest stood still, 
And listens like a three years' child ; 
The mariner hath his will — 

and four or five lines more in different parts of the poem which I 
could not now point out. The idea of shooting an albatross was 
mine, for I had been reading Shelvocke's Voyages, which probably 
Coleridge never saw. I also suggested the re-animation of the 
dead bodies, to work the ship.'" — Note in edition of Coleridge's 
Poems, (1865) by Der went and Sara Coleridge. See also Me7noi?'s 
of Williafn IVordsivorth, by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, i. 107. 

K 2 



132 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART [BOOK i. 

The wildly-beautiful fragments, ' Christabel ' and 
the ' Dark Ladie,' were also composed about this 
time, though not published till afterwards. ' Chris- 
tabel,' like too much of Mr. Coleridge's poetry, is 
rather a sketch than a finished poem, mingling the 
supernatural and mystical with lively touches of 
human feeling. 

Coleridge was irregular in his times and seasons 
of writing ; composing, often at long intervals, as his 
fancy or the occasion prompted. Many of his finest 
pieces were written long before they were given to 
the world. A collection of his poems entitled 
Sibylline « Sibylline Leaves,' including the greater part of his 
best poetry, was published in 1817.^ The little 
poem of ' Love,' illustrating that passion by a ro- 
mantic tale of a poet's successful courtship, was one 
of the finest of these ' Sibylline Leaves.' Among 
them also was the ' Ode to Georgiana, Duchess 
of Devonshire,' the talented friend of Fox, whose 
form and features have been transmitted to us by 
the pencils of Reynolds and Gainsborough.'^ The 
Duchess, after visiting Italy, had given an account 
in verse of her passage over the St. Gothard, the 
twenty-fourth stanza of this poem being as follows : — 

And hail the Chapel ! hail the platform wild 
Where Tell directed the avenging dart 

With well-strung arm, that first preserved his child ; 
Then aim'd the arrow at the tyrant's heart. 



The first collected and revised edition of Mr. Coleridge's 
poems and dramas was that of 1828, in three volumes. 

2 The Duchess of Devonshire died in 1806, previous to which 
date Coleridge's Ode must have been written. 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 133 

On reading this stanza Coleridge addressed to the 
noble authoress these spirited lines : — 

Splendour's fondly-foster'd child ! 
And did you hail the platform wild, 

Where once the Austrian fell 

Beneath the shaft of Tell ! 
O lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure. 
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure ? 

Light as a dream your days their circlets ran, 
From all that teaches brotherhood to man 
Far, far removed ! from want, from hope, from fear ! 
Enchanting music fiU'd your infant ear, 
Obeisance, praises soothed your infant heart ; 

Emblazonments and old ancestral crests. 
With many a bright obtrusive form of art, 

Detain'd your eye from nature ; stately vests. 
That veiling strove to deck your charms divine. 
Rich viands and the pleasurable wine 
Were yours, unearn'd by toil ; nor could you see 
The unenjoying toiler's misery. 
And yet, free Nature's uncorrupted child. 
You hail'd the Chapel and the platform wild 

W^here once the Austrian fell 

Beneath the shaft of Tell ! 
Oh lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure, 
Whence learned you that heroic measure .'' 
There crowd your finely-fibred frame 

All living faculties of bliss ; 
And genius to your cradle came. 
His forehead wreath' d with lambent flame, 

And bending low with god-like kiss 

Breathed in a more celestial life. 
But boasts not many a fair compeer 
A heart as sensitive to joy and fear } 
And some, perchance, might wage an equal strife ; 



134 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

Some few to noble being wrought, 
Co-rivals in the nobler gift of thought. 

Yet these delight to celebrate 

Laureird war and plumy state, 

Or in verse and music dress 

Tales of rustic happiness, — 
Pernicious tales ! insidious strains ! 

That steel the rich man's breast 

And mock the lot unblest, 
The sordid vices and the abject pains, 

Which evermore must be 

The doom of ignorance and penury ! 
But you, free Nature's uncorrupted child, 
You hail'd the Chapel and the platform wild 

Where once the Austrian fell 

Beneath the shaft of Tell ! 
Oh lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure, 
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure ? 



Excel- Coleridpfe's short poems are perhaps the most 

lence and ^ ^ /. \ ^ 

careful nnished and careiul m the thought, measure and 
his short diction, of any recent verse in the English language. 
poems, Q£ ^^ ^^^Q poems that follow, the first was written 
in early life : — 

TO A PRIMROSE. 

Thy smiles I note, sweet early flower, 
That, peeping from thy rustic bower, 
The festive news to earth dost bring, 
A fragrant messenger of Spring ! 

But, tender blossom ! why so pale ? 
Dost hear stern Winter in the gale ? 
And didst thou tempt the ungentle sky 
To catch one vernal glance and die } 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 135 

Such the wan lustre sickness wears, 
When health's first feeble beam appears ; 
So languid are the smiles that seek 
To settle on the careworn cheek, 

When timorous hope the head uprears, 
Still drooping and still moist with tears. 
If through dispersing grief be seen 
Of bliss the heavenly spark serene. 

The following verses were written late In the 
poet's lifetime, and reflect the evening-light of ex- 
perience : — 

LOVE, HOPE, AND PATIENCE IN EDUCATION. 

O'er wayward childhood would'st thou hold firm rule, 

And sun thee in the light of happy faces. 

Love, Hope, and Patience, these must be thy 

graces, 
And in thine own heart let them first keep school ; 
For as old Atlas on his broad neck places 
Heaven's starry globe, and there sustains it — so 
Do these upbear the little world below 
Of education — Patience, Love, and Hope. 
Methinks I see them group'd in seemly show. 
The straighten'd arms uprais'd, the palms aslope, 
And robes that, touching as adown they flow, 
Distinctly blend, like snow emboss'd in snow. 
O part them never ! If Hope prostrate lie, 

Love too will sink and die. 
But Love is subtle, and doth proof derive 
From her own Hfe that Hope is yet alive ; 
And bending o'er with soul-transfusing eyes. 
And the soft murmurs of the mother dove, 
Woos back the fleeting spirit and half supplies ; — 
Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to 

Love. 



136 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

Yet haply there will come a weary day, 

When overtask'd at length 
Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way, 
Then with a statue's smile, a statue's strength, 
Stands the mute sister Patience, nothing loth, 
And both supporting, does the work of both. 

Robert Southey is the third of the trio whom it 
was at one time the fashion to associate together as 
the Lake Poets, but who, in their practice of poetical 
composition, show very little resemblance to each 
Poems of other. Southey's writing of poetry commenced 
Southey. ^^^^^ ^j^^ same time as that of Wordsworth and 
Coleridge ; his earliest publication being ' Wat 
1794. Tyler,' a short dramatic poem of considerable 
power, strongly tinged with the democratic senti- 
ments then current. Two years after appeared 
his 'Joan of Arc,' an Epic poem (as it was entitled) 
of ten books In blank verse. It celebrates the 
exploits (in the French war of resistance to Eng- 
land) of the ' delegated Maid,' a name employed 
in the poem to Intimate the celestial mission of 
Joan of Arc, and which, had it not been used by. 
Mr. Coleridge in his ' Destiny of Nations ' with the 
same meaning, might be thought too prosaic in 
sound. The poem contains some Imaginative epi- 
sodes and descriptions, adhering otherwise pretty 
closely to history. In the first year of the present 
century came out ' Thalaba the Destroyer,' an 
Arabian myth or metrical romance, described by the 
author himself in his Introduction to ' Madoc ' as ' the 
wild and wondrous song of Thalaba.' This romance 
occupies twelve books, and is composed in Irregular 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 137 

though rhythmical blank verse — the ' Arabesque or- 
nament of an Arabian tale ' — which was considered 
most suitable to the fanciful subject of the poem. 
The beauties of ' Madoc ' are of a more sober order.^ 
This poems tells, at considerable length — 

How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread 

The adventurous sail, explor'd the ocean ways, 

And quell'd barbarian power and overthrew 

The bloody altars of idolatry ; 

And planted in its fanes triumphantly 

The cross of Christ. 

The * Curse of Kehama ' is one of the most ec- 1810, 

centric of Mr. Southey's poems, as well in subject as Kehama 

in the irregularity of its rhyming measure. It is founded 

founded on a doctrine of the Hindoo religfion (to doo my- 

7. thology. 

which there is something akin in the superstitions of 
other nations as to witchcraft), that prayers and 
curses possess an interest and actual value with 
the supreme powers, even when emanating from 
wicked men or women bent on the worst designs ; 
Mr. Coleridge's ' Sexton's Tale ' of the ' Three 
Graves ' being based on a superstition of the same 
kind. The supernatural machinery and brilliant 
imagery of the ' Curse of Kehama,' mostly bor- 
rowed from the Hindoo mythology, is softened and 

^ In a letter to Sir George Beaumont, June 3, 1805, Mr. Words- 
worth says of Madoc, ' The poem fails in the highest gifts of the 
poet's mind — imagination, in the true sense of the word, and 
knowledge of human nature and the human heart. There is 
nothing that shows the hand of the great master ; but the beauties 
in description are innumerable.' — Me7noh^s of IV. Wordsworth, by 
Dr. Christopher Wordsworth. 



13^ VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

varied by passages of sentiment ; and through all 
there displays itself a certain moral grandeur in the 
final measure of poetical justice awarded by the 
denouement of the story. 
Roderick. ' Roderick the last of the Goths,' a tragic poem 
^ ^'^' in blank verse, in twenty-five cantos or books, is 
regarded as the best example of Mr. Southey's 
poetry. The subject is taken from Spanish chro- 
nicles and traditional history, and it relates the ad- 
ventures of Don Roderick, the last Gothic king of 
Spain (whose unrestrained passion for Count Julian's 
daughter opened Gibraltar and Spain to the Moors), 
and his heroic efforts to re-establish the Christian 
power in the north of the Peninsula. The lan- 
guage is flowing and idiornatic and the verse har- 
monious. But though rising occasionally to a 
higher strain, it leaves an impression on the reader 
of an historical romance told in rhythmical prose 
rather than of a great poem. The characters. Moor 
and Christian, are well contrasted in manners, re- 
ligion and sentiment, and it has the rare merit of 
clothing with flesh and blood and giving life to 
the dry bones of antiquated Spanish chronicles. 
The moral key-note of the poem Is given in the 
following passage of Wordsworth's poetry prefixed 

to it : — 

As the ample Moon 

In the deep stillness of a summer even, 
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove, 
Burns like an unconsuming fire of light 
In the green trees ; and kindling on all sides 
Their leafy umbrage turns the dusky veil 
Into a substance glorious as her own — 
Yea with her own incorporated, by power 



CKAP. v.] POETRY. 139 

Capacious and serene : like power abides 

In man's celestial spirit ; virtue thus 

Sets forth and magnifies herself ; thus feeds 

A calm, a beautiful and silent fire 

From the incumbrances of mortal life, 

From error, disappointment — nay from guilt ; 

And sometimes, so relenting justice wills, 

From palpable oppressions of despair. 

Perhaps the most singular of Southey's later vision of 
poetical efforts is the ' Vision of Judgment,' in ten Jj^^jf^T 
short cantos in hexameter verse/ The poet sees ^^^^• 
in a trance the king, George III., recently dead, 
coming for judgment to the gate of the celestial city, 
on the summit of which stands an angel, who sum- 
mons before the Ineffable Presence the spirits of 
heaven and hell as accusers or absolvers : 

On the cerulean floor, by that dread circle surrounded, 
Stood the soul of the king alone. In front was the Presence, 
Veiled with excess of light ; and behind was the blackness 

of darkness. 
Then might be seen the strength of holiness, then was its 

triumph ; 
Calm in his faith he stood, and his own clear conscience 

upheld him. 

A demon brings forward two souls as accusers 
(Wilkes and the author of 'Junius'), but they are 
dumb when confronted with the king before the 



1 The measure of the Latin hexameter had been in the time of 
Queen Elizabeth attempted by Sir Philip Sidney to be applied 
to English verse ; as it has been recently by Coleridge and 
Longfellow. Goethe, with more success, owing to the greater 
prevalence of polysyllabic words in German, has made use of it 
in his poem of Hermann tind Dorothea. 



140 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book I. 



An ima- 
ginative 
produc- 
tion, but 
not 

adapted 
for 
poetry. 



judgment-seat. The soul of Washington then ap- 
pears as an absolver, and the king and the pre- 
sident compHment each other. The king then 
pleads his good intentions and his trust in God ; 
and sentence is pronounced of admission within 
heaven's gate : 

Beautiful then on its hill appeared the Celestial City, 
Softened, like evening suns, to a mild and beautiful lustre. 
Beautiful was the ether above, and the sapphire beneath us ; 
Beautiful was its tone, to the dazzled sight as refreshing 
As the fields with their loveliest green at the coming of 

summer. 
When the mind is at ease, and the eye and the heart are 

contented. 

The king approaches the gate and drinks of the 
well of life, while beatified spirits and the principal 
worthies of England (described at some length) 
come forth to meet him. 

In this poem Mr. South ey takes in hand a highly 
imaginative subject ; but (not to mention the diffi- 
culty of dealing with such a theme in a theological 
point of view) the persons introduced and the events 
referred to were so near his own time and so con- 
nected with recent political struggles as to forbid 
his choice of subject being regarded as judicious or 
well adapted for poetry. His treatment of it also 
has been exposed to a good deal of criticism. 

With all its copiousness, Invention, and erudition 
(to use a word applied by himself to poetry in the 
preface to 'Madoc'), it may be thought that the 
labours of Mr. Southey, though a great master of 
verse in the poetical field have produced a harvest 



CHAP, v.] POETRY. 141 

more remarkable for its weight of straw than of 
grain. His poems have too much the odour of the 
lamp ; and their didactic and political character 
is fully as conspicuous as their representation of 
nature and genuine feeling. 

The poetry of John Wilson (In his early life a Wilson s 
dweller among the ' Lakes') may be said to have Paims. 
drawn Its Inspiration from the same source as that 
of Wordsworth, though its range is more limited 
and its strain inferior. His 'Isle of Palms' and ^^12. 
some shorter poems appeared together. There is 
not much story in the ' Isle of Palms/ and the Inci- 
dents are improbable. It gives one the impression 
of a tale from dream-land. A newly-married pair on 
their tour in the Lake country of Cumberland might 
very possibly be delighted with the descriptions of 
the ocean in Its placid mood, of the gallant ship voy- 
aging in the Pacific and striking upon a rock, and 
the accidental saving, out of 500 creatures who are 
lost, of the lovers, the hero and heroine. These 
two affectionate and faithful beings find a refuge, 
and remain (with a child born to them) for some 
years in the Isle of Palms, a garden of Eden in 
the midst of the ocean, which they at last exchange, 
by the aid of a passing ship, for their native vale 
in Wales. The ' City of the Plague,' a dramatic 
poem of more individuality and vigour, was published 
with some other pieces in 18 16. 

On his appointment to the Moral Philosophy 
chair in the University of Edinburgh, Mr. Wilson 
gave up almost entirely the writing of poetry. In 
his ' Moral Lectures ' and in the prose of ' Black- 



142 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART [BOOK r. 

wood's Magazine ' his writing was frequently dis- 
tinguished by an eloquence and poetic ms more 
glowing and less restrained than when the language 
he used was measured verse/ 

^ The first quarter of the present century was very fertile in 
poetry ; and had some of the writers, whose productions are in- 
ferior only to those of their more remarkable brethren of the lyre, 
lived in another generation, they might have taken a higher posi- 
tion. Of such is the poetry of Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, 
author of the Queeris Wake; of John Leyden, the friend of Scott; 
of Allan Cunningham ; of Tennant, author of Agister {Anstruther) 
Fair ; of Mrs. Tighe, the authoress of Psyche ; of Procter (Barry 
Cornwall) ; of Dr. Milman and of the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, 
author of Translations from the Norse, and the original poems of 
Helga and Attila. The poems of Hartley Coleridge, whose 
volatile Hfe, too soon cut short, is considered by Mr. Wordsworth 
{Memoirs, by Dr. C. Wordsworth) to be not incorrectly typified in 
Mr. S. T. Coleridge's line addressed to his babe in the poem of 



Frost at Midnight- 



Thou shalt wander as a breeze- 



have been given to the public in a second edition by Derw^nt 
Coleridge, 1851. 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY. 143 



CHAPTER VI. 

P OY^T^Y—contiimed. 

Poems of Thomas Moore — Of Campbell — Of Sir Walter 
Scott — Lord By ro7t's poetry — Its personal character — The 
more subtle and abstract poetry of Shelley — The poetry 
of Keats — Its irregular beauty, and treatment by the 
* Quarterly Review! 

The poetical propensities of Thomas Moore, an Poetry of 
alumnus of Dublin University (which had been 
opened to Roman Catholics in 1793), were revealed 
at an early period of his life through the publication 
by subscription in London of his ' Odes of Anacreon,' 1800. 
dedicated to the Prince of Wales. The greater 
portion of his subsequent poetry was flavoured 
with the 

To pO^OV TO TWV ipCOTCOV 

of his first master in song. The ' Poetical Works 

of the late Thomas Little, Esq.,' in which Mr. 

Moore's juvenile muse wears her zone too loosely 

bound, appeared in the following year ; and soon 1806. 

after, two volumes of ' Odes and other Poems.' 

Moore's principal work in verse, ' Lallah Rookh, Lallah 
^ ^ . Rookh. 

an Oriental Romance,' came out m 1817, He had 

1 The Rose, the Rose of the Loves, 
Let us mingle with our wine. — Aiiacreon. . 



ism. 



144 VIEW OF LITERATURE A^'D ART. [book i. 

previously studied with great care Oriental literature 
of all kinds, and his descriptions and allusions are 
Imbued SO imbued with Orientalism as to require constant 
Oriental- explanatory notes and quotation of authorities at the 
foot of the page. There is in fact a degree of 
accuracy of costume that rather interferes with the 
current of the narrative and the reader's enjoyment 
of its meaning and sentiment. ' Lallah Rookh ' 
embraces four poems artificially set in a prose ro- 
mantic story, the first of which, the ' Veiled Prophet 
of Khorasan,' is too revolting in its leading details 
to be permanently interesting. The second tale, 
' Paradise and the Peri,' is of a more pleasing cha- 
racter. It tells of a sylph ' of fair but erring race,' 
who is excluded from Eden, but may yet be ad- 
mitted by bringing ' the gift most dear to heaven ' 
to the angel guarding the eternal gate. After a 
search (giving occasion to some brilliant description) 
and various trials, the tear of a repentant sinner is 
the gift accepted by the angel, and the Peri enters 
with it the gate of Eden. The third story, ' The 
Fire-Worshipper,' is considered the best of the series. 
It details (with a certain touch of Lord Byron's 
manner) the hapless love of the daughter of a 
Moslem emir and a Gheber or fire-worshipper, and 
the contest and death-struggle, in an island-fastness, 
of the Gheber and his adherents with the emir's 
army. This tale is full of incident and agitating 
emotion. The last of the pieces, ' The Light of the 
Haram,' of which the scene is laid in the Vale of 
Cashmere, relates to a lovers' quarrel between the 
Sultana Nourmahal and the emperor Selim, and Its 



CHAP. VI.] * POETRY. 145 

reconcilement, and is composed chiefly of sparkling 
sketches and songs. 

In ' Lallah Rookh,' as in most of Moore's verse, 
there is too much glitter and laboured allusion and 
too little real feeling to admit of his productions 
ranking very high as poetry. His poem of the 
' Loves of the Angels ' was much read on its first 
appearance, and, it is believed, has been very little 
read since. The ' Irish Melodies,' in which the 
sweet airs of his country are married to Mr. Moore's 
words, may be regarded as among the best of his 
performances. In the general beauty of the diction, 
in sparkle of thought and sentiment, and in the 
perfect adaptation of the words to the music, the 
merit of the ' Irish Melodies ' has been acknow- h-ish 
ledged in all salons of the British empire. Criticism and mher 
is disarmed on the principal point which was open Po^^^>- 
to observation by the poet's own remark in his 
prefatory Letter on Music, that as the verses are 
intended rather to be sung than read, ' he can answer 
for their sound with somewhat more confidence than 
for their sense.' 

Mr. Moore is also the author of a quantity of 
miscellaneous and occasional poetry, in which, parti- 
cularly in his later life, politics and society take a 
joint share with the little winged god in affording 
subjects for his muse. , ' The Twopenny Post-bag,' 
' Fudge Family in Paris,' and other amusing ' Trifles,' 
had their day of sunshine. Of the short lyrics and 
songs in ' M.P. or the Blue Stocking,' the two first 
may be given as showing in their way the poet's 
manner : — 



146 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

Young Love lived once in an humble shed, 

Where roses breathing 

And woodbines wreathing 
Around the lattice their tendrils spread, 
As wild and sweet as the life he led. 

His garden flourish'd, 

For young Hope nourish'd 
The infant buds with beams and showers ; 
But lips, though blooming, must still be fed. 
And not even Love can live on flowers. 

Alas ! that Poverty's evil eye 

Should e'er come hither, 

Such sweets to wither ! 
The flowers laid down their heads to die, 
And Hope fell sick as the witch drew nigh. 

She came one morning. 

Ere Love had warning. 
And rais'd the latch, where the young god lay ; 
* Oh, oh ! ' said Love, ' is it you .-* good-by ; ' 
So he ope'd the window and flew away ! 



To sigh, yet feel no pain. 

To weep, yet scarce know why ; 
To sport an hour with Beauty's chain. 

Then thrown it idly by ; 
To kneel at many a shrine. 

Yet lay the heart on none ; 
To think all other charms divine. 

But those we just have won — 
This is love, careless love, 
Such as kindleth hearts that rove. 

To k:eep one sacred flame. 

Through life unchill'd, unmoved. 
To love in wintry age the same 

As first in youth we loved ; 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY. 147 

To feel that we adore, 

To such refined excess, 
That, though the heart would break with more, 

We could not live with less — 
This is love, faithful love. 
Such as saints might feel above. 

In the last year of the i8th century, when Words- 
worth and Coleridge were proposing, in their ' Lyrical 
Ballads,' to give a new direction to British poetry, 
Thomas Campbell's ' Pleasures of Hope ' appeared. Poems of 
More declamatory in style, it was yet not different bell 
in kind from the measured and careful poetry of 
Goldsmith and other writers of the traditional 
classic school. Didactic and rather desultory, this 
poem contains brilliant and pathetic passages, which, 
like his shorter lyrics, ' The Battle of Hohenlinden,' 
* The Mariners of England,' and others, soon caught 
the popular ear. His ' Gertrude of Wyoming, a 
Pennsylvanian Tale,' in the Spenserian measure, 
came out ten years after the ' Pleasures of Hope.' 
Its descriptions of scenery want reality, and the 
story is broken and somewhat melodramatic ; but its 
representation of domestic life in romantic seclu- 
sion, and its striking and pathetic situations, interest 
the reader. After a still longer interval appeared 
' Theodric,' a domestic story. This poem contains 1824^ 
some good description of Swiss scenery. The inci- 
dents, without being very probable, are perfectly 
possible, and lead to situations affecting and pathetic, 
suggestive of those crosses by which the course of 
true love is said to be occasionally stopped. As 
with most of Campbell's poetry, the diction Is 

unaffected and polished. 

L 2 



148 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 



Scott's 
early 
transla- 
tions 
from the 
German. 



His short poem of ' O'Connor's Child/ a tale of 
the love and madness of a daughter of Erin, displays 
more passionate feeling expressed in picturesque and 
melodious verse than is seen in his more elaborate 
productions. Of its sixteen stanzas, the following 
is the third : — 

And fixed on empty space why burn 

Her eyes with momentary wildness ? 
And wherefore do they then return 
To more than woman's mildness ? 
Dishevell'd are her raven locks, 

On Connocht Moran's name she calls ; 
And oft amidst the lonely rocks 

She sings sweet madrigals. 
Placed 'twixt the foxglove and the moss, 

Behold a parted warrior's cross ; 
There is the spot where evermore 
The lady, at her shieling door, 
Enjoys that in communion sweet 

The living and the dead can meet ; 
For, lo ! to love-lorn fantasy 
The hero of her heart is nigh. 

The influence of the study of the new literature 
of Germany show^ed itself very decidedly in the 
earliest literary attempts of Walter Scott. His 
translations or imitations of Burger's ballads of 
' Lenore' and the 'Wild Huntsman ' were brought 
out ' by request of friends ' in a thin quarto, in 1 796 ; 
and they were followed by his version of Goethe's 
iron-handed ' Gotz von Berlichingen.' ' The reader,' 
says Mr. Lockhart,^ 'who turns to the version of 
" Gotz " for the first time will be no less struck than I 



Life of Sir Walter Scott, i. 296. 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY. 149 

was, under similar circumstances, with the many - 
points of resemblance between the tone and spirit of 
Goethe's delineation and that afterwards adopted by 
the translator in some of the most remarkable of his 
original works.' Of this Mr. Lockhart gives an 
example from the German play in the description of 
a battle by a spectator on a height ; recognising 
in Goethe's drama the original of the death-scene in 
Marmion, where the vivid account is given of the 
battle of Flodden. There can be little doubt also 
that the study of the German ballads, concurring 
with his own predilections and the precedent he had 
before him in the Percy collection of ballads, attached 
Scott more keenly to that kind of poetry ; the result 
of this united impulse being the volumes of the 
' Border Minstrelsy,' in which are contained the 
germs of much of his subsequent original writing. 

The ' Lay of the Last Minstrel ' was at first 
designed to form part of the third volume of the 
'Minstrelsy,' as a 'Romance of border chivalry;'^ TJhe 

' Lciv * 

and although it outgrew the dimensions requisite for 
its admission, this shows very clearly the category 
of poetry to which the ' Lay ' was considered by the 
author to belong. The first suggestion of a popular 
ballad on the story of the goblin page was made to 
Scott by the Countess of Dalkeith ; the happy idea 
of putting it into the mouth of an aged minstrel, and 
of the beautiful lines introductory to the several 
cantos, being adopted when the poem was enlarged 
for separate publication. The ' Lay ' was brought 

^ Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scoti, i. 365. 



150 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

out in the first week of 1805, inscribed to the 
Earl of Dalkeith ; the preface stating that as ' de- 
scription of scenery and manners was more the 
object of the author than a combined and regular 
narrative,' the plan of a metrical romance had been 
adopted as allowing greater latitude in this respect, 
and also in the occasional change of the rhythm, 
than would be consistent with a regular poem. It 
was received on all hands with warm commendation. 
Marmion ' Marmiou ' followed three years after, and although 
poems. ^^ ^t first not so much a favourite as the ' Lay of the 
Last Minstrel,' it is now regarded as Scott's chief 
poetical work. The advertisement to this poem 
stated that any historical narrative, far more an 
attempt at epic composition, exceeded the author's 
plan of a romantic tale ; yet he hoped from the 
popularity of the * Lay,' ' an attempt to paint the 
manners of the feudal times upon a broader scale, 
and in the course of a more interesting story, would 
not be unacceptable to the public' With the ' Lady 
of the Lake,' Scott's poetry attained a popularity 
greater than had fallen to the lot of any poet for 
upwards of half a century. The effect it had on the 
public mind was more decided and marked than 
as yet could be said of any Influence exercised by 
the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, or Southey. 
Lie continued writing in the same style for some 
years longer, producing successively ' Rokeby,' the 
'Vision of Don Roderick,' and the * Lord of the 
Isles ; ' but his poetic star at last waned before 
the ruddier light of that of Byron, and (wisely per- 
haps for himself, and happily for the reading world) 



CHAP. VI.] • POETRY. 151 

he exchanged poetry for the prose of the Waverley 
novels. 

Sir Walter Scott's style of poetical writing, 
though in some measure the revival of an older 
style, had in it much of novelty for his own time, 
as well as variety of treatment. While adhering 
in general to the octo-syllabic, that measure was 
occasionally changed for another. When referring 
to his own poetry, Scott speaks of it chiefly as a Charac- 
painting of manners and customs, and scenery, sirw. 
combined with a story of Q^reater or: less interest ; ^^^^'^ 

^ ^ ' poetry. 

in this respect rather underrating it. Along with a 
picturesque resuscitation of the past, and some ad- 
mirable delineation of scenery, as of Melrose by 
moonlight, in the ' Lay of the Last Minstrel,' and of 
Loch Corruisk in the ' Lord of the Isles,' there was 
much in it to interest the heart as well as the head. 
Of this the introductions to the cantos in the two 
first poems, and many fine passages scattered 
through all the poems, are evidence. The principal 
part of his poetry undoubtedly is narrative and de- 
scription ; but narrative and description of a su- 
perior kind, expressed in spirited and rhythmical, 
though sometimes careless verse, occasionally run- 
ning into the minuteness of the antiquary and 
herald, but as often relieved by touches of elevated 
or pathetic feeling. His creatures of the past are 
animated by the breath of human life, with its hopes 
and fears, lessons and warnings, sorrows and joys. 
Scott's may not be of the highest kind of poetry, 
imaginative and passionate ; but although the in- 
terest excited by it now is not so great as when it 



152 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book L 

first came out, it is so associated with the scenery 
and history of the country as to make it Hkely to 
continue a standard portion of British poetry. 

If any of Sir Walter Scott's poetry can be said 
to be less known than other passages of it, the 
stanzas commencing the 4th canto of the ' Lord of 
the Isles ' may perhaps in this respect be quoted as 
a sketch of Highland scenery : — 

Stranger ! if e'er thine ardent step hath traced 
The northern realms of ancient Caledon, 
Where the proud Queen of Wilderness hath placed, 
By lake and cataract, her lonely throne ; 
Sublime but sad delight thy soul hath known. 
Gazing on pathless glen and mountain high, 
Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown 
Mingle their echoes with the eagle's cry, 
And with the sounding lake, and with the moaning sky. 

Yes ! 'twas sublime, but sad. The loneliness 
Loaded thy heart, the desert tired thine eye ; 
And strange and awful fears began to press 
Thy bosom with a stern solemnity. 
Then hast thou wish'd some woodman's cottage nigh. 
Something that show'd of life, though low and mean ; 
Glad sight, its curling wreath of smoke to spy. 
Glad sound, its cock's blithe carol would have been, 
Or children whooping wild beneath the willows green. 

Such are the scenes, where savage grandeur wakes 
An awful thrill that softens into sighs ; 
Such feelings rouse them by dim Rannoch's lakes. 
In dark Glencoe such gloomy raptures rise ; 
Or farther, where, beneath the northern skies, 
Chides wild Loch-Eribol his caverns hoar, — 
But, be the minstrel judge, they yield the prize 
Of desert dignity to that dread shore. 
That sees grim Coolin rise and hears Coriskin roar. 



I 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY. 153 

Lord Byron commenced his poetical career very Lord 
early, his ' Hours of Idleness ' having been pub- poetry, 
lished at Newark while he was yet a minor. This 
juvenile production was severely handled in the 

* Edinburgh Review ; ' as a return for which the 
young poet rushed into print in 1809, with his 

* English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' a satire 
somewhat in the manner of, but inferior to, Gifford's 
' Baviad.' Lord Byron himself afterwards described 
it as 'a record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate 
acrimony.' ^ 

Lord Byron's poetry took much of its character Much of 
and tone from the circumstances of his life. These \^„ ^^e ' 
have been so minutely brought before the public, gj^^^eg'^f 
and are so well known, that it will be sufficient for his life, 
the purposes of this notice merely to refer to them. 
His boyhood was passed with his mother in Aber- 
deenshire. But however meet nurse Caledonia and 
the vale of Dee may have been for a poetic child, 
Byron's education otherwise appears to have been 
irregular and superficial. To judge from his writings 
in later life (particularly the piece entitled the 
' Island'), nothing at that time seems to have made 
so much impression upon him as * 

The grisly rocks that guard 
The infant rills of Highland Dee. 

When he went to England, after succeeding to 
his title and encumbered estates, his course of study 
at Harrow and Cambridge was more marked by 

1 Life (by Moore) and Works, i. 245 ; edition of 1833. 



154 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book r. 

the extensive knowledge he gained of books and 
general reading than by scholastic acquirements. 
He was very soon initiated in the pleasures and 
dissipations of youthful life, occasionally retiring to 
Newstead Abbey with a few friends, and waking 
the echoes of that ancient pile with nights of jollity. 
With all this he cultivated a growing taste for 
literature, the first fruit of which was his ' Hours of 
Idleness.' 

On coming of age and taking his seat in the 
House of Lords, Lord Byron found himself almost 
alone in London, and without friends to introduce 
him in society ; having quarrelled with one family 
friend whose influence could have aided him, the 
Earl of Carlisle, and there being not many of his 
Harrow and college chums whose acquaintance he 
cared to continue. In his relations with the world 
he was rather difficult of access, and of an unbend- 
ing spirit. In the year following the appearance of 
' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' isolated in 
society, conscious of great powers, loving pleasure, 
and desirous of knowledge, he set out on a conti- 
nental tour with Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Cam 
Hobhouse. They went by way of Portugal, the 
south of Spain and the Mediterranean, to Greece 
and Albania, and afterwards to Constantinople and 
Asia Minon 

Returning, after two years' absence, to England, 
Lord Byron brought in his portmanteau two poems 
of very different kind. One was intended to be a 
sequel to the ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' 
a paraphrase of Horace's 'Art of Poetry,' from 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY. 155 

publishing which he was with some difficulty diverted 
by the advice of a judicious friend.^ 

As to the other (Childe Harold) the poet's first Childe 
intimation of it to this friend was, that ' he had the poet's 
occasionally written short poems, besides a great g^fniate^" 
many stanzas in Spenser's measure, relative to the °^^^- 
countries he had visited — not worth troubling him 
with — but he might have them all with him, if he 
liked. '^ These 'stanzas in Spenser's measure,' so 
lightly esteemed by their author, were the first and 
second cantos of ' Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,^ which 
were seen in manuscript and approved of by Mr. 
Gifford, and were published together in the spring 
of 1812. The preface states the poem to have been 
written for the most part amidst the scenes which 
it describes, the fictitious character of the hero being 
introduced for the sake of giving some connection to 
the piece ; and it justifies the adoption of the Spen- 
serian measure by the practice of Ariosto, Thomson, 
and Beattie. ' Childe Harold ' made an impression 
upon the public mind immediate and positive ; an 
effect to be attributed principally to the intrinsic 
merit of the poetry, partly also to a certain personal 
interest attaching to the author. In the course of 

^ Mr. Dallas. The paraphrase of the De Arte Poeficd, which was 
named Hints from Horace, was published nine years after Lord 
Byron's decease. At the time it was written he prided himself 
more upon it than upon Childe Harold, and he retained during 
his life a theoretical preference for the classical poetry of Horace 
and Pope. — Letter to Mr. John Murray on the Rev. W. L. Bowies' 
Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope, London, 1821 ; and 
Letter to Mr. Murray, Sept. 15, 181 7 ; Life, iv. 63. 

2 Life^ ii. 15. 



15^ V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

Other the next year the ' Giaour ' and the ' Bride of Abydos ' 
appeared, the one dedicated to Mr. Samuel Rog'ers, 
and the other to Lord Holland. With an occasional 
variation of metre they are written in the same octo- 
syllabic verse which Scott's poetry had made popular. 
Mr. Moore (with whom the noble poet had now 
formed a close friendship) informs us that these 
poems were both rapidly struck' off in paroxysms, as 
it were, of passion and imagination, caused in a 
temperament like his by the life of excitement and 
dissipation into which he had too readily been drawn. 
According to the same authority there is no ground 
for connecting Lord Byron personally with the main 
incidents of the ' Giaour ' and other tales that fol- 
lowed, however he may have occasionally encouraged 
such a supposition.^ That Byron was however in a 
certain measure ' the great sublime he drew ' in the 
hero of the first two cantos of Childe Harold, cannot 
well be disputed. 

In the winter of 1814 the 'Corsair' made its 
appearance, with a dedication to Mr. Moore ; in 
Jan. 6, a letter to whom the author thus refers to his 
poem : * I have got a devil of a long story in 
the press entitled the '' Corsair," in the regular 
heroic measure. It is a pirate's isle peopled with 
my own creatures, and you may easily suppose they 
do a world of mischief through the three cantos.' 
This was followed in a few months by ' Lara,' 
which being a short poem was brought out in the 
same cover with Mr. Rogers' ' Jacqueline ' — an odd 

> Life^ ii. 312. 



1814. 



CHAP. VL] POETRY. 157 

union soon after severed by ' Lara ' being joined 
with Lord Byron's collected poems. The ' Siege 
of Corinth ' and ' Parisina,' both founded on histori- 
cal incidents, were written in 18 15, the first year 
of the poet's marriage, and appeared together early 
in the next year. In these tales there is less of 
that morbid sentiment and gloomy individualising 
of the poet's own feelings or assumed feelings which 
distinguishes Lord Byron's ' sensational ' poems of 
this period. 

Before his unhappy separation from Lady Byron 
and final departure from England in April 1816, 
which elicited the lines of ' Fare thee well,' the 
' Hebrew Melodies ' had been written to the music 
of Braham and Nathan. The first fruits of Lord 
Byron's return to the continent, when he took the 
route of Belgium, the Rhine and Switzerland, was the 
third canto of ' Childe Harold,' in which the mask of 
a fictitious hero is all but dropped, and the flow of 
energetic verse is uninterrupted by an artificial 
framework. About the same time appeared, in a 
separate cover, the ' Prisoner of Chillon ' and other 
pieces. His impressions of the places he visited 
and their associations are rendered in these poems, 
as afterwards in the fourth canto of ' Childe Harold,' 
without intermediate delay, like gold coin fresh 
from the mint ; evidencing how much his best poetry 
was inspired by real scenes and objects, elevated 
and coloured by his imagination. The ' Dream,' a 
touching but painful sketch of the poet's feelings 
with reference to his marriage, was appended to the 
' Prisoner of Chillon.' And it may be characterised 



15^ V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

as a poem which no man of deHcacy of sentiment 
would have given to the world. About this time 
were written the verses to ' Augusta,' his sister 
Mrs. Leigh, beginning with these lines, — 

My sister, my sweet sister ! if a name 
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine. 
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim 
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine : 
Go where I will, to me thou art the same — 
A loved regret which I would not resign. 
There yet are two things in my destiny, 
A world to roam through and a home with thee. 

In 1817, while Lord Byron was at Venice, ' Man- 
fred ' came out in London ; a ' dramatic poem ' in 
blank verse embodying the poet's thick-coming 
fancies and bold personifications during his rambles 
among the Alps.^ In ' Manfred ' some critics 
discovered symptoms of a fiercer misanthropy and 
deeper despondency than had yet appeared in Lord 
Byron's poetry.^ 

Whether this view be taken of the poet's settled 
misanthropy and despondency, or whether (as some 
think) a good deal of it was assumed, and con- 
tinued for effect and to sustain a character, ' Man- 
fred ' may be regarded as one of the most original 
and sublime of Lord Byron's productions. The 
' Lament of Tasso,' published along with ' Man- 
fred,' was suggested by a visit to Ferrara, where are 

* In this mention of Lord Byron's poetry reference will not be 
made to his other dramas, which are shortly noticed in a subse- 
quent chapter. 

2 Edinburgh Review^ August 18 17. 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY. 1 59 

relics and remembrances of Tasso. A rapid journey 
in Italy, and a visit to Rome from Venice, where he 
had taken up his residence in 1817, was the ground- 
work and occasion of a fourth and concluding canto 
of ' Childe Harold,' showing no diminution of power. 

Soon after it came ' Beppo,' a Venetian story, in 
which a new chord of light humour is struck, form- 
ing a comparatively innocent prelude to the poem of 
* Don Juan ' that soon followed it. The lively and 
spirited ' tale of * Mazeppa * was written at Ravenna 
in 1818. 

'Beppo' and 'Don Juan' were probably in part Beppo 
suggested by the poet's dissolute life at Venice, in juan. 
the course of which new topics and imagery would 
be supplied, and associations of former days re- 
called. ' I have finished,' says he, in a letter to Mr. 
Moore from Venice, 'the first canto of a poem in 1818. 
the style and manner of " Beppo," encouraged by 
the good success of the same. It is called " Don 
Juan," and is meant to be a little quietly facetious 
upon everything. But I doubt whether it is not too 
free for these very modest days.' ' Don Juan,' like 
' Childe Harold,' had no plan or preconceived story, 
and it displayed from the first a coarseness of 
morale 2Lndi. a license in attacking people and opinions, 
both literary and political, which materially counter- 
balanced the merit of its poetry in the eyes of the 
British public. There are few things in literature 
superior to the description of the storm and ship- 
wreck in the second canto and some parts of the 
siege of Ismail in the seventh and eighth cantos ; 
both founded on real narratives which had struck 



l60 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART [book i. 

him in the course of his reading". In several of the 
passages of fictitious adventure, mixed with much 
ribaldry, there is a tenderness and intensity of feeling 
which in every well-constituted mind must cause 
earnest regret that the merit of this poem, taken as 
a whole, should be well-nigh cancelled by its per- 
vading spirit of mockery and apparent disbelief not 
only in the higher truths, but in the existence of 
common virtue and fidelity. Neither in this, nor 
indeed, in any of his poems (if we except perhaps 
an occasional passage in ' Childe Harold '), does 
Lord Byron show that he had perception of moral 
beauty or a wish to recognise it. 

Besides the sixteen cantos of ' Don Juan' and the 
dramas, various lesser compositions, reflecting the 
whims, passions, reading and recollections, which 
then occupied his versatile mind, engaged the last 
years of the poet's life. Amongst these were the 
1821. ' Prophecy of Dante,' in four short cantos in the terza 
of o'ante' ^^^^ ^^ Dante ; a poem of great power and serious 
tone, in which the Italian poet is supposed, before 
his own death, to foretell the future fortunes of Italy. 
The subject was suggested by the Countess Guiccioli 
at Ravenna (the heroine of Lord Byron's latest 
liaison)^ to whom the poem was addressed in a dedi- 
catory sonnet. The Prophecy concludes with these 

lines : — . 

. . 'Tis done ; 
I may not overleap the eternal bar 
Built up between us, and will die alone, 
Beholding with the dark eye of a seer 
The evil day to gifted souls foreshown ; 
Foretelling them to those who will not hear, 
As in the old time, till the hour be come 



CHAP. VI. POETRY, l6l 

When Truth shall strike their eyes through many a 

tear, 
And make them own the prophet in his tomb. 

Another of these later pieces was the ' Vision 
of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus, suggested by 
the composition so entitled by the author of Wat 
Tyler ' (Mr. Southey). This production is a strange 
tissue of mockery, blasphemy, and satire. In clever 
but careless verse. The poem of the ' Island, or The 
Christian and his Comrades,' written at Genoa, Is '\^^' 
founded on Bligh's narrative of the mutiny of the 
Bounty In the South Seas, In 1 789, and on Mariner's 
account of the Tonga Islands. The ' Island ' has 
neither the poetic energy nor the careful versification 
of his earlier pieces, though It shows the remarkable 
phenomenon In Lord Byron's poetry of a pair of 
faithful lovers. In one passage of this, well-nigh his 
latest composition, the poet touchlngly reverts to the 
associations of his childhood and youth In connection 
with mountain scenery : — 

He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue 
Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue ; 
Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face 
And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace. 
Long have I roam'd through lands which are not mine, 
Adored the Alps and loved the Apennine, 
Revered Parnassus and beheld the steep 
Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep ; 
But 'twas not all long ages' lore nor all 
Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall ; 
The infant rapture still survived the boy, 
And Loch-na-gar with Ida looked o'er Troy, 
Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, 
And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount. 

M 



1 62 VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK I. 

In the spring of 1824 Lord Byron's literary as 
well as his mortal career was closed by fever at 
Missolonghi, whither he had gone to aid the cause 
of the Greeks, prompted by that impulsive philan- 
thropy and inextinguishable zeal for liberty which 
appears in so many passages of his writings. 
Poetry of The poetry of Percy Bysse Shelley is sometimes 
Shelley, associated with the poetry of Lord Byron, from the 
circumstance of their opinions on political and re- 
ligious subjects in many respects coinciding, and from 
their having occasionally resided together abroad. 
But the poetry of the two men differed as essentially 
as their habits of life, the muse of Byron having 
much more of the texture of humanity than that of 
Queen his friend.^ Shelley's first considerable poem ' Queen 
Mab,' a juvenile production in irregular rhythmical 
measure after the manner of Southey's ' Thalaba,' 
narrates a conference in cloudland between the fairy 
Mab and the spirit or soul of a lady named lanthe, 
temporarily separated from her body. It was written, 
printed and privately distributed when the author 
was a student at Oxford in 18 10. The startling 
song of the fairy Mab, denouncing ' kings, priests, 

* Mrs. Shelley, in a note to the Revolt of Islam, in her edition 
of her husband's poetical works (1839), observes: — 'Perhaps 
during this summer (i8i6) Shelley's genius was checked by asso- 
ciation with another poet whose nature was utterly dissimilar to 
his own, yet who, in the poem he wrote at that time {Manfred) 
gave token that he shared for a period the more abstract and 
etherealised inspiration of Shelley.' Some of Shelley's poems 
were not published till after his death ; and it is according to the 
date at which they were written, as given in Mrs. Shelley's edition 
of his works, that those noticed in the text are referred to. 



CHAP. VI.] . POETRY. 163 

and statesmen,' with its Utopian and socialist views, 
and accompaniment of fanciful imagery, like a little 
volcano springing from a flowery meadow, was too 
remarkable not to attract attention ; and the piece 
was soon afterwards reprinted and published when 
Shelley was on the continent. * Alastor, or the 
Spirit of Solitude,' written in the neighbourhood of 
Windsor Great Park, appeared with some smaller 
poems in 1 8 16. It gives vent to the melancholy 
broodings of a heart ill at ease, and records the im- 
pression made on the poet by beautiful and majestic 
features of natural scenery. 

The ' Revolt of Islam,' in twelve short cantos, in Revolt of 
the Spenserian measure, this author's most ambitious 
poem, was written at Marlow-on-the-Thames and 
published in 18 18. Before the year expired it 
appeared again, with some passages modified, under 
the title of ' Laon and Cythna ; or the Revolution 
of the Golden City, a vision of the 19th century.' 
Of the subject of the poem it may just be said, 
^ these things are an allegory.' It commences 
with a dedication to the poet's wife, containing a 
graphic sketch of his own and of her personal his- 
tory.-^ Displaying much energy of language and 

^ Those feelings of indignation, apparently instinctive in 
Shelley, at what he chose to consider the evils of social life in 
England, and his daring resistance to the ' chain of custom ' and 
authority, may possibly have first taken shape in his school-days 
at Eton. The sad experience of those days, giving perhaps to his 
over-sensitive mind a permanently morbid tone, is recalled in the 
following stanzas of this dedication : — ■ 

Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first 
The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. 

M 2 



164 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 



If a 
subject 
adapted 
for 
poetry ? 



novelty of Imagery, its mystical song embraces a 
great variety of topics, some of which can hardly be 
considered fit subjects for poetry. Whatever, in 
regard of this, may be said of the tyranny of oppres- 
sors, the ' uprise of liberty,' and the attack on the 
Golden City, such abstract themes as the ' Evils of 
Custom ' and the ' Rights of Woman ' do not belong 
to the domain of poetry, and their introduction in 
this poem mars its effect.^ Considering the ' Revolt 
of Islam ' as a poem, and to be viewed in that light, 
the matter and real meaning, when stripped of its 



I do remember well the hour which burst 
My spirit's sleep : a fresh May-dawn it Avas 
When I walk'd forth upon the glittering grass 
And wept, I knew not why ; until there rose 
From the near school-room voices that, alas ! 
Were but an echo from a world of woes, 
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 

And then I clasp'd my hands and looked around, 
But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, 
Which pour'd their warm drops on the sunny ground ; 
So without shame I spake : I will be wise 
And just, and free and mild, if in me lies 
Such power, for I grow weary to behold 
The selfish and the strong still tyrannise 
Without reproach or check. I then control'd 
My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. 

And from that hour did I with earnest thought 
Draw knowledge from forbidden mines of lore ; 
Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught 
I cared to learn, but from that secret store 
Wrought linked armour for my soul, before 
It might walk forth to war among mankind : 
Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more 
Within me, till there came upon my mind 
A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. ' 

^ Mrs. Shelley (to whom the poet was married on the death of 
his first wife) was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft (Mrs. 
Godwin), authoress of the Vindicatio7i of the Rights of Woman 
(1792). 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY. 165 

allegorical mask and fanciful dress, and the senti- 
ments conveyed and inculcated in almost every page, 
would seem much too 'perilous stuff' for poetry to 
be made of 

Of Shelley's poems some are so full of mysterious other 
thought and hazy expression as to be hardly intelli- sheiley? 
gible to the ordinary reader ; some strike harshly on 
the jarring chord of extreme politics ; others give a 
spiritualised version of his impressions of natural 
objects. In almost all his poetry (to use the words of 
Mrs. Shelley) ' there is a clinging to the subtle inner 
spirit rather than the outward form, a curious and me- 
taphysical anatomy of human passion and perception.' 

Shelley's singular tale of ' Rosalind and Helen,' 
and the drama of ' Prometheus Unbound,' were the 
fruits of his residence in Italy in 18 18. He there 
dramatised the Italian story of ' Beatrice Cenci,' Beatrice 
which may perhaps be regarded as the best of his C^^^^- 
larger works, full of thought and feeling of an in- 
tensity warranted by the deeply tragical nature of 
the subject. In the dedication of this piece to Mr. 
Leigh Hunt, the author says : — 

Those writings which I have hitherto published have 
been little else than visions which impersonate my own 
apprehensions of the beautiful and the just. I can also 
perceive in them the literary defects incidental to youth 
and impatience ; they are dreams of what ought to be or 
may be. The drama which I now present to you is a sad 
reality ; I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an in- 
structor, and am content to paint, with such colours as my 
own heart furnishes, that which has been. 

Excited by the uneasy political condition of Eng- 
land at that time, he gave vent to his revolutionary 



1 66 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART, [book I. 

sentiments in the ' Masque of Anarchy ' and other 
short pieces of an inflammatory character. In the 
following years were composed, in rapid succession, 
the ' Witch of Atlas,' described by the poet himself 
as a ' visionary rhyme ; ' ' Hellas,' a lyrical drama on 

Shorter the war in Greece; the lyrics entitled ' The Cloud' 
and ' To a Sky-lark,' two of his finest poems ; the 
impassioned and highly imaginative, though not 
very intelligible poem, ' Epipsychidion,' consisting of 
verses addressed ' to the noble and unfortunate Lady 
Amelia v., imprisoned in a convent ; ' and ' Adonais,' 
an Elegy or Lament in quaint but pathetic language, 
and full of passionate sentiment, on the death of John 
Keats, whose poems were in Shelley's hand when he 
was himself unhappily drowned on the north-west 
coast of Italy a year after he had penned this tribute 
to the memory of his friend.^ 

Poetry of Although ' not possessed of so fiery a soul as 

Keats 

that which wrought out its way in the mortal 
frame of Shelley, John Keats was not inferior to that 
writer in imagination and sensibility. His education 
and training was that of a London surgeon's appren- 
tice, and of a very commonplace kind ; but the 

^ To have left unnoticed the poetry and Jeux d'esprit of Leigh 
Hunt, whose Story of Rimini, from Dante, appeared re-fashioned 
in 1 814, and the poetical pieces of Charles Lamb, of Mrs. Hemans, 
of Mrs. Maclean (L. E. L.), and of Mr. T. L. Beddoes, may 
appear again an omission in the text. All that can be done in 
their case, as in that of several others, is to apologise to their 
admirers for venturing to consider them as writers of secondary 
importance, whose poetry, though possessing merit, seems hardly 
deserving of special mention in this view of the chief literary 
productions of the period. 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY. 167 

poetic genius he displayed in circumstances not 
favourable to its development was of the highest 
promise. His life was short, and his literary career 
closed before the maturity of his powers. 

Through the medium of translations from the 
classical poets and the ordinary school dictionaries 
Keats became imbued in his youth with a poetical 
knowledp^e of the heroes and s^ods of Greece. The ^l^^t in- 

° ^ ^ spiration 

sensuous mythology of the ancients found a sympa- from the 
thetic chord in his bosom, and exercised a visible mytho- 
influence over his thoughts and feelings, when they °^' 
came to seek expression in verse. Among English 
writers it was Spenser who (according to Lord 
Houghton) struck the secret spring of his fancy, and 
gave the main impulse to his poetic life. His first 
poems, a collection of sonnets and miscellaneous 
pieces, which appeared in a small volume in 181 7, 
did not attract much notice. But Keats aimed at 
greater things. To a query of Mr. Leigh Hunt, 
'Why endeavour after a long poem?' his answer 
was, ' Do not the lovers of poetry like to have a 
little region to wander in, where they may pick and 
choose, and in which the images are so numerous 
that, many are forgotten and found new in a second 
reading — which may be food for a w^eek's stroll in 
the summer. Besides, a long poem is a test of 
invention, which I take to be the polar star of 
poetry, as fancy is the sails and imagination the 
rudder.'^ 

In the course of another year Keats accordingly 



Memoir of John Keats (by Lord Houghton). 



mion. 



168 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

wrote and gave to the world the poetic romance of 
Endy- ' Endymion.' The preface (with more ingenuous- 
ness than prudence) expresses the author's own 
misgivings that the reader must soon perceive in 
the poem * great inexperience, immaturity and every 
error denoting a feverish attempt rather than a deed 
accomplished.' It concludes with a hope that the 
author had not in too late a day touched the beau- 
tiful mythology of Greece and dulled its brightness ; 
for he wished to try once more, before bidding it 
farewell. 

The classical character of the poetry of Pope and 
his life-long admiration of the ancients are facts in 
poetical history. In the poetry of Keats, the last 
poet falling now to be mentioned, it is not unworthy 
of remark how much it owes in point of subject and 
imagery to the mythology and fabulous history of 
those same ancients : — 

The dead but sceptred sovereigns that still rule 
Our spirits from their urns. 

' Endymion,' with a very slender story, takes for 
its subject the mythological loves of the lunar god- 
dess Cynthia or Diana and the shepherd of Latmos, 
introducing Venus and Adonis, Glaucus and Circe, 
by the way. The scenery and imagery display the 
bright creations of an inventive fancy, but the beings 
introduced are too much beyond human ken and too 
shadowy to excite much interest, even though ani- 
mated by the warmth of the poet's own emotions. 
The poems that followed, after a short interval, the 
production of ' Endymion' — 'Lamia,' ' Isabella,' the 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY. 169 

* Eve of St. Agnes,' ' Hyperion,' and other pieces — 
were by many preferred to it. ' Lamia' indeed 
and 'Hyperion' still traced back to antiquity; the 
former taken from a Greek tale referred to in 
Burton's ' Anatomy of Melancholy,' and reminding 
the classical reader of ' Apuleius,' while ' Hyperion' 
was a fragment of a projected epic on the expulsion 
from heaven of the Titans. ' Isabella, or the Pot of 
Basil,' an imitation from Boccacio, and the ' Eve of 
St. Agnes,' bearing likewise some resemblance to the 
style of an Italian novel, had more of human interest 
and came more home to the feelings and sympathies 
of modern times. The measure (in stanzas) of these 
poems may have had the effect also of restraining the 
exuberance and extravagance of thought and diction 
which are conspicuous in the poetry of ' Endymion.' 

Keats, in his poetical training, had drunk deep of study of 
the wells of early English poetry, drawing from EngLh 
Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Milton. His poets. 
frequent use of antique words, particularly in his 
first compositions, and his adoption to a certain 
extent of the manner of these writers, without how- 
ever attaining their strong and vigorous sense, is an 
homage paid to them at the expense in some degree 
of his own originality. Setting out from this starting- 
point, the greater part of the poetry of Keats is 
marked in its style by a fluent and melodious though 
somewhat mannered old English diction ; while to 
his reading and his fertile imagination he is in- 
debted for richness of matter and a copious stream 
of poetical ideas ; the exuberant flow of which has 
been increased by the exigencies of his rhymes steer- 



170 V/EJV OF LITERATURE AND ART, [book I. 

Ing him into courses of new imagery. This is especi- 
ally observable in ' Endymion.' In his shorter 
poems he is more under restraint in the conduct of 
his subject, while he displays a great mastery of 
rhythm. They have also less affectation of antique 
phraseology. Among these lighter compositions are 
to be remarked the ' Ode to a Nightingale,' ' Fancy,' 
' Autumn,' ' Robin Hood,' and others.^ 

Treat- ^ The poetry of Keats had in it so much irregularity and 

merit of novelty, that when it came to be known, it was subjected, as may 

Keats bv 

the ^^ supposed, to a good deal of criticism. The Edinburgh Review 

Quarterly (August 1820) gave Endymio7t a very qualified approval. 'It is 

Review. ^^ truth,' said Mr. Jeffrey at the commencement of one of his 

paragraphs, 'at least as full of genius as of absurdity.' To the 

other poems he was more favourable. The Quartefdy Review 

made an unnecessarily severe and contemptuous criticism upon 

Endymion, considering the youth and inexperience of the author. 

I'or this the reviewer was rated by the friends of Mr. Keats in 

prose and verse. And after his decease the article in the Quarterly 

was accused of having produced so violent an effect on the 

susceptible mind of Keats as to have caused the rupture of a 

blood-vessel in the lungs. There does not appear to be ground 

for so grave an accusation. The Review came out in April 18 18. 

Keats, whose physical system had been giving way under the 

pressure of various influences, went to Italy on account of his 

health, accompanied by his friend Mr. Severn the artist, in the 

autumn of 1820. He died at Rome of consumption in February 

182 1« So that the alleged cause of death was at least remote. 

Lord Byron, writing to Mr, Murray (April 26, 1821), says, 'Is it 

true what Shelley writes me, that poor John Keats died at Rome 

of the Quarterly Review ? ' His lordship's doggrel verse on the 

subject, preserved in his Life by Moore, would rather imply that 

he treated the report as a joke : — 

Who kill'd John Keats ? 
I, said the 'Quarterly,' 
So savage and tartarly, 
'Twas one of my feats. 

tn the Quarterly Review for April 1833, of Mr. Tennyson's poems, 



CHAP. VL] POETRY. 171 

The following 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is in 
several respects characteristic of Keats : — 

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness ! 

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, 

Sylvan historian, Avho canst thus express 

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : 

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 

Of deities or mortals, or of both, 

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady ? 

What men or gods are these ? What maidens loath ? 

What mad pursuit ? What struggle to escape ? 

What pipes and timbrels ? What wild ecstasy ? 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
Are sweeter ; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ; 
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear' d, 
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone : 
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bafe ; 
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss. 
Though winning near the goal — yet do not grieve ; 
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair ! 

Ah, happy, happy boughs ! that cannot shed 

Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu ; 

And, happy melodist, unwearied, 

For ever piping songs for ever new ; 

More happy love ! more happy, happy love ! 

For ever warm and still to be enjoy 'd, 

the reviewer takes occasion (in a half-ironical vein), to ' sing a 
palinode' on the subject oi Endymion, confessing at the same 
time inability to discover in Mr. Keats's poetry that degree of 
merit which its more enthusiastic and prophetic admirers did. 
The reviewer then, ' warned by his fomier mishap and wiser by 
experience,' proceeds to a very mild criticism on the poems of 
Mr. Tennyson 



172 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK 

For ever panting and for ever young ; 
All breathing human passion far above, 
That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloy'd, 
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? 
To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 
Leadst thou that heifer lowing at the skies. 
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest ? 
What little town by river or sea-shore, 
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel 
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn ? 
And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
Will silent be ; and not a soul to tell 
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 

O Attic shape ! Fair attitude ! with brede 
Of marble men and maidens overwrought. 
With forest branches and the trodden weed ; 
Thou, silent form ! dost tease us out of thought, 
As doth eternity : cold Pastoral ! 
When old age shall this generation waste, 
Thou shalt remain in midst of other woe 
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 
' Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. "^lo 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE DRAMA. 

Retrospective glance at tJie state of the Drama between the 
Restoration and the reign of Queen Anne — Dry den — 
Otzvay — Congreve — FarqitJiar — Its ininwrality exposed 
by Jeremy Collier — Subsequent course of the British 
Drama : I. In Tragedy — A ddisons ' Cato ' — French in- 
flue7ice — Decline of Tragedy — Domestic tragedies of 
Lillo and Moore — Tragedy of Douglas — The 'Mys- 
terious Mother ' of Walpole — German adaptations — Re- 
currence to the older English models — Plays of Joanna 
Baillie a7td others — Dramatic Poems of Lord Byron : — 
//. Course of the Drama in Comedy — * Careless Husband' 
of Cibber — Genteel Comedy — Pantomime — English 
Opera — ' Beggars Opej^a ' of Gay — Comedy of the ' Pro- 
voked Husband' — Loiv Comedy — Personal Comedy of 
Foote — Sejitiinental Comedy — Comedies of Goldsmith a7id 
Sheridan — Other comedies of mixed character. 

To GIVE a satisfactory account of the state of the 
British Drama at the close of the reign of Queen 
Anne it would be necessary to go back at all events 
to the Restoration, the dramatic compositions of the 
period from that date to the accession of the House 
of Hanover having an important bearing upon and 
connecting with those of the period that followed. 
The Drama had in England passed through several 
phases prior to the accession of George I. To the 
rude plays of the first part of the reign of Queen Eliza- 
beth succeeded, almost without an interval, the great 



174 



VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [cooK I. 



Change 
in the 
drama at 
the Re- 
storation. 



Nov. 26, 
1661. 



Heroic 
Plays. 



Diary, 

Feb. 

1664. 



Duke of 
Bucking- 
ham's Re- 
hearsal. 
1672. 



era of the early English dramatists. Among these. 
Shakespeare shone pre-eminent, and after him Ben 
Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Web- 
ster, Shirley and Ford. 

For about twenty years during the time of the 
Civil war and the Commonwealth the drama was 
in a torpid state, and when it re-appeared after the 
Restoration of Charles II. a change had come over 
its spirit and style. Evelyn mentions in his * Diary ' 
that he had gone to see Hamlet played, ' but now 
the old plays begin to disgust this refined age since 
his Majesty's being so long abroad.' The decla- 
matory ' Heroic ' plays introduced by Dryden, full 
of high-flown sentiment and exaggeration, were 
written, like the tragedies of Corneille, in rhyming 
couplets, but (in order to suit the taste of an English 
audience) with more action and bustle in the con- 
duct of the piece. The prevailing taste of the day 
appears again from the following entry by Evelyn, 
— ' I saw the '' Indian Queen," a tragedy by Dry- 
den and Howard, well written, and so beautiful 
with rich scenes as the like had never been seen 
here or haply elsewhere on a mercenary theatre.' 
These earlier plays of Dryden, as well as the plays 
of his friends Sir Robert Howard and Sir William 
D'Avenant, were satirized In the comedy of the 
' Rehearsal ' by George Villiers Duke of Bucking- 
ham ; a well-timed piece of wit that found an echo 
in the sentiments of the better-informed portion of 
the English public.^ 

^ The following passage may be cited as an example of the 
way in which ' heroic plays ' were dealt with in this comedy : — 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 1 75 

The later plays of Dryden as well as the dramas 
of contemporary writers reverted after this to a 
more natural and passionate delineation of the 
actions and feelings of men in the department of 
tragedy, and in comedy to a more humorous and 
life-like representation of the subject of the piece. 
There appeared at this time, among other plays of 
inferior merit, the ' Orphan ' and ' Venice Preserved ' 
of Otway, Lee's ' Rival Queens, or the Death of 
Alexander the Great,' Dryden's ' Don Sebastian ' 
and ' Spanish Friar,' the ' Fatal Marriage ' of 
Southerne, and the ' Mourning Bride ' of Congreve. 1697. 
Many comedies of the same period by Wycherley, 
Dryden, Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh, still 
hold their place in literature, as lively and witty 
productions, however objectionable they may be in 
a point of view that shall be immediately noticed. 

The following lines from Dryden's ' Epistle to 
Congreve,' on the appearance of his comedy of the 
'Double Dealer' in 1694, give that great writer's 
view of the course the Drama was taking :- — 

Strong were our sires, and as they fought they writ, 
Conquering with force of arms and dint of wit, 
Their's was the giant race before the flood ; 
And thus, when Charles return'd. Our empire stood. 



Bayes. Now, sir, I'll show you a scene indeed, or rather a scene of scenes. 

'Tis an heroic scene. 
Smith. And pray, sir, what's your design in this scene ? 
Bayes. Why, sir, my design is — gilded truncheons, forced conceit, smooth 

verse, and a rant. . . . Gentlemen, I must desire you to remove 

a little, for I must fill the stage. 
Smith. Why fill the stage ? 
Bayes. Oh, sir, because your heroic verse never sounds well unless the 

stage is full. 



I7<5 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

Like Janus he the stubborn soil manured, 

With rules of husbandry the rankness cured, 

Tamed us to manners when the stage was rude, 

And boisterous English wit with art endued. 

Our age was cultivated thus at length ; 

But what we gained in skill we lost in strength. 

Our builders were with want of genius curst, 

The second temple was not like the first. 

Till you, the best Vitruvius, come at length, 

Our beauties equal but excel our strength. 

Firm Doric pillars found your solid base, ] 

The fair Corinthian crowns the higher space ; r 

Thus all below is strength and all above is grace. J 

The praise of Congreve with which these lines 
conclude may now be considered in excess of his 
deserts. His tragedy of the ' Mourning Bride,' 
the story of which is laid in the Moresco-Spanish 
period, contains some fine passages and sparkling 
thoughts, but there Is a want of probability in 
the incidents and too unlimited recourse had to the 
dagger and bowl. His comedies of ' Love for Love' 
and the ' Double Dealer ' have more of intrigue and 
movement than story and development of character, 
and are marked by a brilliancy of dialogue and re- 
partee straining too much the attention of the reader 
and audience. 
Drama of But whether Dryden's high estimate of Congreve 
II. and be just or not, his plays and those of Dry den himself 
ni ifable ^^^ their contemporary dramatists are liable to a 
to charge charge of immorality and indecency so serious as to 

of immo- . . . 

raiity and obscure their frequently splendid beauties. This 

cency. feature is less remarkable in the tragedies, although 

they are interspersed occasionally with scenes of 

gross humour for the purpose of relieving the tragic 

action, than In the comedies. In the denouement 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 1/7 

of the tragedies, the laws of retributive justice are 
more observed. In the comedies, on the contrary, 
not only is the dialogue out of all measure free, but 
profligacy and vice usually receive at the close of 
the piece whatever rewards the author s fancy can 
bestow. 

The wits of Charles found easier ways to fame, 

Nor wish'd for Jonson's art or Shakespeare's flame. 

Themselves they studied ; as they felt they writ : 

Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit. 

Vice always found a sympathetic friend ; 

They pleased their age, and did not aim to mend.^ 

To the Rev. Jeremy Collier s ' Short View of the Collier's 
Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage,' of^Sr^^ 
which appeared in 1698, is due the credit of first \^^^^ °^ 
drawing attention to and exposing this feature of 
the drama. And although his honest zeal may have 
carried him beyond the bounds of controversial 
civility and his glosses of particular passages may 
be occasionally strained, it is generally acknowledged 
that Collier's fearless exposure of the unblushing 
license of the drama, together with the greater re- 
finement in every kind of writing that came to 
prevail in the reign of Anne, had the effect of pro- 
ducing a very considerable reform in English dra- 
matic literature. 

At the same time it Is to be observed that this 
reformation in the drama and In acting plays did 
not show Itself immediately or decidedly. Both 
audiences and authors were much inclined to 

^ Prologue by Samuel Johnson, spoken by Mr. Garrick at the 
Opening of Drury Lane Theatre, 1747. 

N 



17^ VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

reply to Jeremy Collier in the words of Shake- 
speare — * What, because thou art virtuous, shall we 
have no more cakes and ale ? Aye, by the Lord, 
and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too.' 
Come- The comedies of Sir Richard Steele were the first 

^\y^ in which appeared an improved style and tone in 
Steele. point of morality and decency. His ' Grief a la 
1702-3. Mode' and 'Tender Husband' were not indeed 
remarkable in this point of view ; but they were 
lively and humorous, and successful on the stage. 
1704. His next comedy of the * Lying Lover, or the 
Ladies' Friendship,' taken from the ' Menteur ' of 
Corneille, was avowedly written in the severe man- 
ner required by Collier, but was ill received. The 
author considered himself ' a martyr and confessor 
for the church; for this play (as he afterwards alleged) 
was damned for its piety.' ^ 
Con- The ' Conscious Lovers,' unobjectionable in point 

scious - -. , - - 

Lovers, of morality, was brought out seventeen years after 
and met with better success, although a sententious 
and rather lengthy play ; a result partly owing to the 

1 Mr. Steele's Apology for Himself and his Writings, p. 48 ; 
1 7 14. The preface to the Lying Lover remarks — 'Though it 
ought to be the care of all governments that public representa- 
tions should have nothing in them but what is agreeable to the 
manners, laws, religion and policy of the place or nation in 
which they are exhibited, yet it is the general complaint of the 
more learned and virtuous amongst us that the English stage has 
extremely offended in this kind. I thought, therefore, it would be 
an honest ambition to attempt a comedy which might be no im- 
proper entertainment in a Christian commonwealth.' The Pro- 
logue concludes thus : — • 

If, then, you find our author treads the stage 

With just regard to a reforming age, 

He hopes, he humbly hopes, you'll think there's due 

Mercy to him for justice done to you. 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 1 79 

suggestion of Colley Cibber (then joint patentee with 
Sir Richard Steele in the management of Drury 
Lane theatre) that some comic scenes and characters 
should be added to the piece by the author, which 
was done/ 

The comedies of George Farquhar, a captain in 
the army — his ' Constant Couple ' and ' Beaux Stra- 1707. 
tagem,' avoiding the extreme license of their im- farquhar 
mediate predecessors, retained that animated style ^^ ^^' 
of dialogue and incident which was congenial to the 
taste of an English audience. His ' Recruiting j^or 
Officer,' with some coarseness of allusion, abounds in 
broad humour and characteristic painting of manners. 
Without the indiscriminate practice of repartee to be 
found in the comedies of Congreve, those of Far- 
quhar and Sir John Vanbrugh were more natural 
and easy in the dialogue and quite as lively. The 
early comedies of Vanbrugh were equal in looseness 
and freedom of language to those of his contem- 
poraries. His posthumous play of the ' Provoked 
Husband, or a Journey to London ' (as completed 
by Cibber), is much more restrained in this respect, 
while in the conduct of the plot and in easy and 
sprightly dialogue it is superior to the other comedies 
of its time. The comic dramas of Mrs. Centlivre, who 
wrote in the early part of the iSth century, are full 

1 Life of Steele (in the Neio British Theatre^ vol. 9) . 

' There is nothing but heathenism,' says Mr. Abraham Adams, 
' to be learned from plays ; I never heard of any plays fit for a 
Christian to read but Cato and the Conscious Lovers, and I must 
owTi in the latter there are some things almost solemn enough foi 
a sermon.' — Joseph Andrews. 

js^ 2 



l8o VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I, 

of bustle and intrigue, but inferior In style and 
manner to those of the writers just mentioned ; and 
they show very little deference on the part of the 
authoress to the moral teaching of Mr. Collier. 
RoM-e's In tragedy, the 'Fair Penitent' of Rowe, bor- 

dies. rowed from the * Fatal Dowry ' of Massinger, was 

a popular play In the reign of Anne. It is written 
in smooth blank verse, but is not marked by great 
delicacy of description and language. It appeared 
1713- ten years prior to his tragedy of 'Jane Shore,' pro- 
fessedly written in imitation of the style of Shakes- 
peare ; of which however it falls very far short. 

Having taken this retrospective glance at the 

general state of the drama in England prior to the 

accession of George I., the way is now more clear 

for a view of its subsequent progress, taking note 

first of Tragic compositions. 

Predomi- I. The tendency in English literature for more 

of the than half a century after the Restoration to Imitate 

f^t''^^ the French literature of the age of Louis XIV. 

seems to have been magnified and Insisted on by 

some authors to a degree beyond what the results 

as appearing In our literature warrant. That there 

was however such a tendency in favour of the 

classical style is sufficiently clear, and it has shown 

Itself more perhaps In dramatic than in any other 

species of composition. The strict observation 

of the unities of action, time and place, was with 

Dramatic French dramatists a fundamental rule, the com- 

unities. 

paratlve neglect of which by Shakespeare and his 
contemporaries formed the basis of the objections 
of classical critics to their dramatic writings. The 
English dramatists prior and subsequent to the 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. l8l 

Revolution of 1688 were more guarded in this respect 
than their predecessors. Without trammelKng them- 
selves unnecessarily with the rules of the unities, 
they avoided gross irregularities ; their example 
in this particular being followed by later dramatic 
writers, who have studied with more or less suc- 
cess to observe the unity of action, and are not 
so scrupulous as to the unities of place and time. 

It fell to Mr. Addison to produce in the tragedy Addison's 
of ' Cato ' a strictly classical play, measured in strictly 
composition, lofty in sentiment, and observant of ^^^y ^^^^ 
all the unities. The success it had when first 
produced in the theatre is said to have been i7i3« 
owing in some degree to the party zeal of the 
Whigs ; for, although represented in after times on 
the stage when a Booth or a Kemble could be found 
to personate Cato, it has always been regarded as a 
cold and unimpassioned drama, without much poetical 
feeling or real propriety of character and situation, 
and has met with more applause abroad in its French 
and Italian versions than in Britain. What interest 
it possesses centres in Cato himself — ' a brave man 
struggling in the storms of fate,' the love scenes 
being of a very subordinate character. At the same 
time the language of the play is harmonious English 
blank verse, without any admixture of French 
idiom ; ^ and there is not a line which Jeremy Collier 
himself would have wished to blot 

^ Cato's address to Juba in the second Act — 
Thy nobleness of soul obliges me, &:c. 
may possibly be an exception to the observation in the text, and 
have reference to the French idiomatic expression 'Noblesse 
oblige.' 



t82 view of literature And art. [booki. 

Mr. Pope In his Prologue to ' Cato ' indignantly 
refers to the dramatic translations from the French 
which had already come into vogue : — 

With honest scorn the first famed Cato view'd 
Rome learning arts from Greece whom she subdued. 
Our scene precariously subsists too long 
On French translation and Italian song : 
Dare to have sense yourselves ; assert the stage, 
Be justly warm'd with your own native rage. 
Such plays alone should please a British ear 
As Cato's self had not disdained to hear. 

imita- That this caution of Pope had not much effect 

French on hls countrymen appears from the number of 

^^^^' translations or imitations of the plays of Voltaire 

produced in the early part of the i8th century; of 

which the *Zara' and the 'Merope' of Aaron Hill, and 

the ' Mahomet ' of Miller, are among the best. 

The drama in England had now got upon a 
wrong tack, and it cannot excite much surprise that, 
with the increasing favour on the part of the play- 
going public for opera and pantomime, tragedy 
almost entirely lost its hold of the stage. 

Then crush'd by rules and weaken'd, as refined, 
For years the power of tragedy declined : 
From bard to bard the frigid caution crept 
Till declamation roar'd whilst passion slept ; 
Yet still did virtue deign the stage to tread, 
Philosophy remained though nature fled. 
But forced at length her ancient reign to quit. 
She saw great Faustus lay the ghost of wit ; 
Exulting Folly hailed the joyous day, 
And pantomime and song confirmed her sway.^ 

* Prologue by Sat7iuel Johnson, spoken by Mr. Garrick at the 
opening of Drury Lane Theatre, 1747. A pantomime called 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA, 



Skilful delineation of character, probability of 
story, and the genuine expression of feeling, were 
disregarded in the tragic compositions of that time. 
The rule of Mr. Bayes that ' you must ever make 
a simile when you are surprised ' was much more 
carefully attended to than is permitted by the 
rhetorical dogma of the incompatibility of wit and 
strong emotion.^ Sententious and declamatory pieces, 
professedly correct according to certain conventional 
canons, were presented to the British public as the 
only legitimate tragedies. 

The ' Revenge' of Dr. Edward Young, the ' Siege 172 1. 
of Damascus ' of Pope's friend Hughes, the ' So- 1720, 
phonisba' and other plays of James Thomson, were 
of this kind. Even the 'Irene' of Johnson, and 1749 
Mason's 'Elfrida' and ' Caractacus,' were defective 
in the leading qualities of tragedy, and failed to 
strike a responsive chord in the breast of either 
audience or reader. The subjects and characters 
of these tragedies were too far removed from the 
ken of ordinary mortals, or at least their authors 
had not the art of sufficiently investing them with a 
life-like interest. 

Lillo's tragedies of ' George Barnwell,' ' Fatal Lillo's 

TJie Necromancer^ or Harlequin Dr. Fatcstus, was produced at 
the theatres in 1724, and was for some years Ytry popular. In 
a contemporar}^ print of Harlequin Faustus in this piece, the fol- 
lowing doggrel lines appear at the foot of the print : — 

Thank you, Genteels, these stunning claps declare 

That wit corporeal is your darling care. 

See what it is the crowded audience draws, 

While Wilks no more, but Faustus, gains applause. 

Wilks was a celebrated actor, who died about the year 1732. 
^ Hume's essay on Simplicity and Refinement. 



154 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book I. 

tragedies Curiosity,' and ' Arden of Feversham,' were an 

tic life!^^' experiment how far the material for tragedy could 

be supplied from domestic and common life ; and 

an experiment which cannot be regarded to have 

been unsuccessful. In composing his plays LIllo 

had it also in view to extend and make more useful 

the moral teaching of the drama.^ 

George ' George Barnwell/ founded on the ballad of that 

Barnwell. ^^^^ -^^ j^^. p^j-^y's ^ Reliques of English Poetry/ 

was successfully brought on the stage in 1731 ; the 
observation upon it by Mr. Pope, who was present 
on the first night It was acted, being, that Lillo had 
never deviated from propriety except In a few 
passages in which he aimed at a greater elevation 
of language than was consistent with character and 
situation.^ This play was written in prose, 'Fatal 
Fatal Curiosity ' in blank verse. The latter, although not 
Curiosity, g^ popular on the stage, and In three acts only, will 
rank higher than ' Barnwell ' as a literary composi- 
tion. Founded on a true history, the characters and 
incidents skilfully and naturally developed, there Is In 
it an air of terrible reality which renders the catas- 
trophe revolting to the feelings of an ordinary audi- 
ence. Bating some exaggeration of language at the 
close, and allowing for the different position of the 
characters and the difference *of scene, the conduct 
of the fable and the action of this piece are not 
unworthy of comparison with the productions of the 



* Dedication of George Barnwell to Sir John Eyles, Bart, in 
Lillo's Dramatic Works, edited by Thomas Davies. 
2 Davies' Life of George Lillo, prefixed to his Works. 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 1 85 

Greek drama; to one of which, the ' CEdipus Tyran- 
nus,' it bears in its train of incidents some resem- 
blance.^ ' Arden of Feversham,' also a * true tragedy ' Arden of 
of middle life, was produced at Drury Lane some sham? 
years after the author's death, but was acted only 
one night. The crime that forms the subject of 
this play has, singularly enough, a Greek parallel 
likewise in the story of Clytemnestra. 

The * Gamester ' of Edward Moore was another Moore's 
tragedy from domestic life, of affecting interest and ster!^^' 
clothed in well sustained prose diction. It was pro- •'^sa- 
bably suggested by the plays of Lillo. The hold it 
maintained upon public favour was much assisted by 
the powerful acting of Mrs. Siddons as Mrs. Beverley. 

The tragedy of ' Douglas,' written in blank verse The 
by John Home, a Scottish clergyman of the Estab- of^Home. 
lishment, was represented at Edinburgh in 1756, 
and at Covent Garden in the following year. In 
the existing dearth of good tragedies it was perhaps 
more applauded than otherwise might have been 
the case. Without any remarkable individuality of 

^ Harris's Philological Enquiries^ part 2, chap. vii. The Pro- 
logue to Fatal Curiosity was written by Fielding, then manager of 
the Haymarket Theatre ; — 

The Tragic Muse has lon^ forgot to please 

With Shakespeare's nature or with Fletcher's ease : 

No passion moved, through five long acts you sit, 

Charm'd with the ppet's language or his wit. 

Fine things are said, no matter whence they fall ; 

Each single character might speak them all. 

But from this modern fashionable way 

To-night our author begs your leave to stray. 

No fustian hero rages here to-night. 

No armies fall to fix a tyrant's right : 

From lower life we draw our scene's distress ; 

Let not your equals move your pity less ! 
* <f ^ * 



1 86 VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

character or powerful language, the emotions excited 
by ' Douglas ' were familiar, and came home to the 
feelings of all. Its plot was suggested by the tale 
of Gil Morrice, In Percy's ' Reliques,' and the moving 
picture it gives of maternal and filial love, and of 
Lord Randolph's causeless jealousy, is heightened by 
scenes and situations of marked theatrical effect. 
The dramatic unities are almost as strictly observed 
as In the ' Cato ' of Addison, while some inconsist- 
encies to which their observation gives rise in 
Addison's play are avoided. In his anxiety, how- 
ever, to observe the unities the author of * Douglas ' 
has crowded more events into a limited space and 
time than probability would seem to admit of.^ 
Myste- Horace Walpole's tragedy of the * Mysterious 

Motherof Mother,' with an CEdipus-lIke subject too revolting 
Waipole. jj^ i^g nature, though drawn from Incidents In real 
life, was another deviation from the prevalent French 
taste. It was represented at the Hay market theatre, 
and was first printed at Mr. Walpole's private press 
^^'^'^' at Strawberry Hill. ' Our genius and cast of think- 
ing,' it is said in the postscript to the play, ' are 



1 None of the subsequent plays of Mr. Home — Agis^ the Siege 
of Aquileia, and three others, were equal to Douglas. The repre- 
sentation oi Douglas at Edinburgh in 1756 gave rise to a bigoted 
persecution of Home and his friends on the part of the Presbyterian 
church-courts. and a host of pamphleteers, which ultimately turned 
the current of public opinion against its authors. Mr. Home was, 
however, so much affected by the feeling excited against him that 
he resigned his clerical charge. In the early part of the present cen- 
tury Presbytery in Scotland had considerably relaxed its severity, 
if we may judge from the toleration extended to the Rev. Mr. 
Thomson, of Duddingstone, in his career of landscape-painting. 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 187 

very different from the French ; and yet our theatre, 
which should represent manners, depends almost 
entirely at present on translations and copies from 
our neighbours.' The unities are very carefully 
observed in the ' Mysterious Mother ; ' the whole 
cast of the tragedy, the characters of the countess and 
intriguing priest are decidedly original ; the language 
(in blank verse) is not strained or exaggerated, and 
the incidents flow as a sequel from the situation. 
As a play, however, it is condemned by the im- 
probability and heinousness of its criminal story, 
exceeding even that of the Greek drama. 

Considering the ill success, generally speaking, of Revival 

. oftrage- 

the various attempts m tragedy during the i8th dies of 
century in England, it is not surprising that the- peareand 
atrical managers and actors such as Garrick, John ^^^j^^^.^'^ 
Kemble and others, should have turned their atten- tists. 
tion to reviving in a suitable manner the tragedies 
and plays of Shakespeare and the older drama- 
tists. Garrick's able rendering of the creations of Acting of 
Shakespeare's genius in Lear, Othello, and Richard and 
the Third, is matter of tradition, almost of history.^ ^^ 



^ According to contemporary accounts Garrick was a more 
faithful follower of nature in his acting than Kemble, and his 
powers were more versatile. Kemble identified himself rather 
with characters of thought than of impulse, as Coriolanus and 
Cato, inclining to refine upon and dignify humanity. In the chief 
female parts of tragedy, as Lady Macbeth, Isabella, Belvidera, no 
actress appears to have approached Mrs. Siddons. To Garrick 
and to Mrs. Siddons (if tradition can be believed), quite as much 
as to Kemble, the fines from Campbell's ode on John Kemble are 

applicable : — 

His was the spell o'er hearts 
That only acting lends ; 



1 88 yiEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book I. 

In the highest walk of tragedy he was succeeded but 
not surpassed by Kemble, Kean, Young and Mac- 
ready ; and there can be no doubt but that pubHc taste 
was turned in a right direction by the efforts of these 
great actors to recall and place upon the stage the 
characters and scenes of the better days of the drama. 
No im- Towards the end of the century original tragedy 

menrin ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ neither the revival of the 
original ]^q^^ plays of Shakespeare, Otway, and Southerne, 
nor the spirit infused by such actors as Henderson 
and Kemble, Mrs. Siddons and Miss O'Neill, into 
their representations, could elicit from the literary 
mind of Britain anything worthy of the name of a 
tragic drama. Recourse was again had to a foreign 
influence ; and as formerly the French taste had made 
German itself felt, SO now the impulse given by Germany to 
in uence. ^^^ literature of Britain showed itself likewise in the 
direction of the drama. Schiller's ' Wallenstein ' was 
translated by Coleridge, Goethe's ' Gotz von Berlich- 
ingen ' by Scott ; but for theatrical representation the 
sensational plays of Kotzebue were preferred. The 
* Stranger/ translated by Thompson and altered for 
representation by Mr. Sheridan, then patentee of 
Drury Lane Theatre, was produced in 1798 with 



Th.e youngest of the sister arts 

Where all their beauty blends. 
For Poetry can ill express 

Full many a tone of thought sublime ; 
And Painting, mute and motionless, 

Steals but one partial glance from time. 
But by the mighty actor brought, 

Illusion's perfect triumphs come ; 
Verse ceases to be airy thought. 

And Sculpture to be dumb. 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 1 89 

great applause ; and in the following year the still 
growing German taste induced Sheridan to manu- 
facture for the stage his ' tragic drama ' of ' Pizarro/ 
taken from another of Kotzebue's plays, the 
* Spaniards in Peru.' ^ 

This unsatisfactory condition of the drama was 
inconsistent with the more just views of dramatic 
writing which now began to prevail in theory if not 
in practice, and which were mainly suggested by the 
study of the elder English dramatists that followed 
the first burst of the German enthusiasm. In the Recur- 
end of the i8th and the commencement of the 19th [^g^oj^^ 
century there appears an evident striving among English 
the better sort of aspirants in the tragic field to 
wTlte original plays in the manner of the old English 
models. Mr. Coleridge's ' Remorse,' a tragedy com- cole- 
posed in 1797 in blank verse, was brought upon the Remorse. 
stage some fifteen years later, and acted to crowded 
houses. The subject and plot are taken from the 
well-wrought mine of Moresco-Spanish life in the 
1 6th century. 1 1 contains several passages of thought 

* The drama of Fizarf^o, which is interspersed with clap-trap 
sentiments and pageantr}' such as might have been suggested by 
Mr. Puff, the hero of the Critic, did not add to the reputation 
of Sheridan as a dramatic writer. An Epilogue to the play, 
written by the Hon. William Lamb, afterwards Lord ^Melbourne 
and Prime Minister, thus concludes : — 

ye who listen to the plaintive strain 

With strange enjo}Tnent and with pleasing pain, 

\Yho erst have felt the Stranger's lone despair, 

And Haller's settled, sad, remorseless care, 

Does Rolla's pure affection less excite 

The inexpressible anguish of delight ? 

Do Cora's fears, which beat without control, 

With less sohcitude engross the soul ? 



IQO V/£IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

and feeling which appear again more expanded in 
the author's poems. 
Plays of The plays of Joanna Baillie also show in the 
Bamfe^ language and many of the passages an inspiration 
drawn from, if not an imitation of, the older drama- 
tists. Of her series of plays intended to delineate 
the stronger passions of the mind, each passion being 
the subject of a tragedy and a comedy, the tragedies 
1798. are the best, and as literary productions are above 
mediocrity. The tragedy of ' Count Basil,' which 
takes love as its passion, and ' Ethwald,' in which is 
delineated a course of barbarian ambition (drawing to 
some extent on ' Macbeth ' and ' Richard the Third '), 
were never acted. ' De Montfort,' of which the 
passion of hatred forms the subject, was acted 
(with some alterations by Mr. Kemble) at Drury 
Lane. Improbable in its story, though of consider- 
able power, it has not kept possession of the stage. 
The ' Family Legend/ a dramatised tale of High- 
land feud, was acted at Edinburgh, with the aid of a 
1810. friendly prologue by Sir Walter Scott. This and 
Miss Baillie's other tragic compositions bear the 
impress of a cultivated feminine mind, energetic 
imagination, and a fair knowledge of the impulses 
of the heart and the springs of human action ; though 
Tram- her plan of devoting^ one play to the exhibition and 

melledby , , ^ ^ ^ . 

their development of one great passion was more m- 

genious than expedient, and put trammels unneces- 
sarily on works of imagination. 

The ' Bertram ' of the Rev. R. C. Maturin, an 

1S15. Irish clergyman, the ' Fazio ' of the Rev. Henry 

Milman, for some time professor of poetry at Oxford, 



plan. 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 19 1 

Leigh Hunt's serious drama, the ' Legend of Flo- 
rence/ and the 'Virginius' of Mr. Sheridan Knowles, 
are productions of merit by authors taking hkewise 
their inspiration more or less from the older models.^ 

Percy Bysse Shelley's drama of ' Prometheus Un- Dramas 
bound,' and his tragedy of the ' Cenci,' a great work \^^ ^^ ^^ 
in its kind, are compositions for the study rather ^^^^ 
than plays for representation. And the same remark rather for 
is applicable to the tragic compositions of Lord than for 
Byron, although several of them have been brought sentation. 
upon the stage. 

In the preface to several of his dramas. Lord 
Byron very carefully informs his readers that they 
are not intended or adapted for the theatre ; a 
perfectly just caution, but which nevertheless has 
not prevented stage-managers from occasionally pro- 
ducing them. This was the case with ' Marino 
Faliero,' 'Werner,' and ' Sardanapalus,' the two last 
of which, with the aid of adaptation and scenery, 
met with tolerable success. 

The genius of Byron was not dramatic. This 
is apparent in his poems, and doubly so in his 
dramas. He was unable to transfer himself, as it 
were, into a variety of different characters, and there 

1 Mr. T. L. Beddoes' Brides Tragedy (1822) and Death's Jest- 
Book were avowedly written for the closet and not for the stage. 
The former, founded on a tragic occurrence in real life at 
Cambridge, was received on its first appearance as a produc- 
tion of genuine merit and good promise, displaying strength of 
sentiment and energy of language. Mr. Beddoes' later dramatic 
compositions and fragments (posthumously published in 185 1), 
though showing a certain vigour and passionate thought, have an 
increasing tendency to exaggeration and extravagance, and are 
hardly amenable to the ordinary rules of criticism. 



192 VIEJV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book t 

is a constant reference in his works to the sentiments 
and feelings, real or assumed, of the poet himself^ 

* Manfred,' a ' dramatic poem ' in three acts, ap- 
peared in 1817, and is described by the author as a 
poem of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable 
kind.^ Its scene is among the Higher Alps, and 
the hero of the piece is a species of magician, under 
the influence of feelings of remorse not easily under- 
stood. Many passages occur in it of great beauty 
and sublimity. * Marino Faliero ' and the * Two 
Foscari ' are called ' historical tragedies,' and taken 
from the Venetian history. They were not received 
with much favour either by the reviewers or the 
public, and are deficient in variety of incident and in 
that interest which calls forth the sympathies of the 

1 It appears a singular inconsistency on the part of the noble 
author that he should disclaim all intention of his dramas being 
represented on the stage, and at the same time trammel himself, 
as he has done in almost the whole of them, with a strict ob- 
servance of the unities, of which the chief object is to accommodate 
a dramatic piece to the rules of theatrical representation. Indeed, 
a question may well be raised whether a dramatic poem, or ' poem 
in dialogue ' (to use an expression applied by Lord Byron to his 
own dramas), which is not 'accommodated to action,' and not 
meant to be represented, should be regarded as a drama in 

Action the proper sense of the term. The dialogue is undoubtedly an 

of the important element in a drama, which without dialogue would be 

of^a"^^ pantomime ; but it is not the principal element. A drama im.phes 

drama. the representation of an action, not by interlocutors but by actors, 

who act as well as speak. A ' poem in dialogue,' therefore, seems 

hardly to come within the meaning and definition of a drama, 

and it is with some hesitation that Lord Byron's productions in 

this kind are referred to in the text as a portion of English 

dramatic literature. 

2 Letter to Mr. Murray, Feb. 15, 1817, Moore's Life of 
Byron. 



CHAP. vii.J THE DRAMA. 193 

reader and audience. The blank verse of these 
dramas and also of 'Werner' and some other 
dramatic compositions of Byron has but little point 
or force, and approaches very nearly to prose, with- 
out its freedom. ' Sardanapalus,' a tragic drama from 
the history of the last Assyrian king, is superior to 
the Venetian dramas, both as regards the conception 
of the piece and the development of character in its 
personages. 

The ' Deformed Transformed,' a piece of dia- 
blerie supposed to have been suggested by the per- 
sonal circumstance of the poet's lameness, is an 
imitation of Goethe^s ' Faust.' The tragedy of 
' Werner,' dedicated ' to the illustrious Goethe,' is 
borrowed from ' Kreutzner, or the German's Tale,' 
by Harriet Lee (in the ' Canterbury Tales '), the 
story and persons, and even the language of the 
novel, being closely copied in the tragedy. 

Two of the most remarkable of Byron's dramatic 
pieces are ' Cain ' and ' Heaven and Earth,' entitled, 
in conformity with the names given to the old sacred 
dramas. Mysteries. ' Cain ' was dedicated to Sir Cain. 
Walter Scott, and is founded expressly on the pas- 
sage in Genesis — ' Now the serpent was more subtile 
than any beast of the field which the Lord God had 
made.' The persons of the drama are Adam, Cain, 
Abel, their wives, and Lucifer ; the piece concluding 
with the murder of Abel in the last act, and the 
scene changing between the country outside of Eden 
and Hades. The dialogue forms the principal por- 
tion of the drama, consisting mainly of argument 
and converse on the most profound topics, the inter- 

o 



194 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

locutors being Lucifer and Cain. The greater part 
of the reasoning and sentiment, sufficiently appro- 
priate to these personages, remains unanswered ; 
and it leaves an impression on the reader's mind of 
a string of passages of sceptical sophistry, such as in 
another form might be-found in the pages of Voltaire 
and Bayle. 
Heaven In the shorter drama or Mystery of ' Heaven and 

Earth. Earth,' founding on the verse in Genesis as to the 
sons of God taking wives of the daughters of men, 
the strain of poetry and feeling is more exalted. 
The scene is in the neighbourhood of Mount Ararat, 
and the time midnight, immediately preceding the 
Deluge. The characters of the two daughters of the 
patriarchs, the love of the one tempered by fear, that 
of the other impelled by ambition, and the grand 
simplicity and brevity of speech of their angel-lovers, 
are given with masterly touches. The wonder and 
despair of the inhabitants of earth at the elemental 
symptoms by which the catastrophe of the Deluge is 
heralded are also powerfully delineated, and the 
whole forms a striking picture of the preternatural 
events to which the Mystery relates. 

II. If Tragedy have not greatly flourished during 
the later period of our annals, not much more can be 
said, with a few brilliant exceptions, of the Comic 
1705. Drama. 
Gibber's The ' Careless Husband ' of Colley Cibber, al- 
^areess ^j^Q^g]^ inferior in point of humour and wit and 
^^^^' amusing incident to the plays of Congreve, Van- 
comedy, brugh, and Farquhar, deserves commemoration as 
being the first of the species of dramas afterwards 
known by the name of 'genteel comedies.' Borrowing 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 1 95 

to some extent from the French in manner and 
dialogue, this play presents in action the petty 
intrigues, affectations and foibles of what the audi- 
ence are invited to regard as genteel or fashionable 
life. In a dedication to the Duke of Argyle the 
author remarks that ' the best critics have long and 
justly complained that the coarseness of most cha- 
racters in our late comedies has been unfit entertain- 
ment for people of quality, especially the ladies.' 
This complaint Gibber professes to obviate in the 
'Careless Husband,' though modern critics will 
hardly allow that he has done so with success. The 
piece, taken as a whole, while in so far remarkable 
as the first in a new manner, seems undeserving of 
the reputation it obtained, considering its slightness 
of plot and ' waiting-gentlewoman ' style of writing 
and loose morality. 

Mr. Gibber was a staunch Whig, and his play of 
the ' Non-juror,' altered from the ' Tartuffe ' of 
Moliere, introduced church politics on the stage. 
The political merits of the 'Non-juror' greatly 
added to the author's court favour, and are said to 
have procured for him the place of Poet Laureate. 1730. 
The exceptionally good comedy of the ' Provoked Provoked 
Husband' was a joint production of Gibber and Sir 
John Vanbrugh, who left the scenes relating to the 
adventures in London of the country baronet and 
his family roughly written at his death. The play 
was completed by Gibber, who was author of the 
scenes in which Lord and Lady Townley appear.^ 

^ The joint authorship of the Pi'ovoked Husband (1728), is 
referred to in the prologue, composed by the veteran Gibber, of 

2 



19^ VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book i. 

Low ebb During the long period of Gibbers management 
comic of Drury Lane theatre, pantomime and farce seem 
rama. ^^ have been more in repute than either comedy or 
tragedy/ The degeneracy of the stage at this time 
has been put on record by the satirical pen of Pope 
in the ' Dunciad ' and by the no less satirical pencil 
of Hogarth, in some of his early prints. One of 
these prints, entitled * A just View of the British 
Stage,' represents Gibber and his coadjutors. Booth 
and Wilks, contriving a new farce or pantomime, 
which is to include ' the two famous entertain- 
ments of Dr. Faustus and Harlequin Jack Shep- 
herd.' In the third book of the ' Dunciad,' theatrical 
amusements of this kind are frequently referred 
to:— ~ 

But lo ! to dark encounter in mid air 

New wizards rise, here Booth and Gibber there : 

which a few Hnes may be quoted as a sample of the versification 
of a Poet Laureate in the time of George II. : — 

This Play took birth from principles of truth, 
To make amends for errors past of youth. 
A bard that's now no more in riper days 
Conscious reviewed the license of his plays, . . 
At length he own'd that plays should let you see 
Not only what you are but ought to be, . . 
Such was the piece his latest pen design'd, 
But left no traces of his plan behind : 
Luxuriant scenes unpruned or half contrived, 
Yet through the mass his native fire survived ; 
Rough as rich ore in mines the treasure lay, 
Yet still was rich, and forms at length a play. 
In which the bold compiler boasts no merit. 
But that his pains have saved you scenes of spirit ! 

' Gibber was associated as patentee in the management of 
Drury Lane theatre with the actors Wilks and Booth, and with 
Sir Richard Steele, who died in 1729. The death of Wilks three 
years after left Gibber, according to Mr. Pope, 'absolute and 
perpetual dictator of the stage.' — Letter to Mr. Gay, Oct. 2, 1732. 



CHAP. viT.] THE DRAMA. 197 

Booth in his cloudy tabernacle shrined, — 

On grinning dragons Gibber mounts the wind ; 

Dire is the conflict, dismal is the din, 

Here shouts all Drury, there all Lincoln's Inn. 

In this condition of the stage, the legitimate drama 
contending In vain with pantomime and the already 
fashionable Italian Opera, appeared the ' Beggars' Gay's 
Opera ' of Gay. With the exception of Addison's opIS^' 
short comic opera of 'Rosamond,' and one or two English 

... opera. 

attempts In the same way of Sir William D'Avenant, 
the ' Beggars' Opera ' was the first musical comedy 
or English ballad-opera professing to rival the Italian.^ 
It was received with great applause, and had a run in 
Its first season of sixty-three nights. The wit and 
satire of the piece, not too refined for the audience, 
the songs and music, the easy and sprightly dialogue, 
the beauty and graceful acting, as Polly Peachum, of 
Miss Fenton (afterwards Duchess of Bolton), all con- 
tributed to Its popularity. ' The " Beggars' Opera," ' 
said Dean Swift In a letter to Gay, ' hath knocked 
down Gulliver; I hope to see Pope's "Dunciad" 
knock down the " Beggars' Opera," but not till It 
hath fully done Its job. To expose vice and make 
people laugh with innocence, does more public ser- 
vice than all the ministers of state from Adam to 

^ Rosamond v^2.'s> acted at Drury Lane in 1707, previous to which 
date the Italian opera had fairly taken root in England. Some 
verses addressed by Tickell to the author of Rosamo7id (in Ton- 
son's sixth Miscellany) begin thus : — 

The Opera first Italian masters taught, 

Enrich'd with songs and innocent of thought, 

Britannia's learned theatre disdains 

Melodious trifles and enervate strains ; 

And blushes on her injured stage to see 

Nonsense well- tuned and sweet stupidity. 



19^ VIBIV OF LITERATURE AND ART [book i. 

Walpole.' Whether Jeremy ColHer would have 
agreed with the Dean in his view of the moral ten- 
dency of the ' Beggars' Opera ' is open to question. 

The subsequent fortunes of the English musical 
drama or opera have not corresponded with its 
debut. The other musical pieces of Gay were 
much inferior. Bickerstaff's ' Love in a Village ' 
1765. and ' Maid of the Mill,' and the ' Duenna ' of Sheri- 
dan, although not boasting great originality, are 
among the few favourable examples of this modifi- 
cation of the drama. In the 'Duenna' particularly 
there is less sacrifice of sense to sound than in the 
general run of English operas. 

From the genius of Henry Fielding, whose lite- 
rary career commenced with play-writing, a rich 
dramatic harvest might have been expected. But 
whether through defect of application or the want of 
that peculiar talent which goes to make a dramatist, 
nothing came from his pen worthy of the author 
of 'Joseph Andrews' and 'Tom Jones.' The 
' Miser,' founded on Moliere's ' L'Avare,' was his 
only comedy of any consequence. His burlesque 
' tragedy of tragedies,' Tom Thumb, is still occasion- 
ally acted. His pieces in low comed^'^r farce, as 
the ' Intriguing Chambermaid,' the ' Mock Doctor,' 
are now almost forgotten. 
Comedies ^^ ^^ department of ludicrous satirical comedy 
of Foote. Samuel Foote for many years carried the fashion 
along with him, however his published plays may 
now fall short of the popularity they enjoyed as 
acting pieces, with himself the principal performer. 
They are generally in two or three acts, composed 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 199 

apparently with careless ease ; the dialogue terse, 
humorous and lively. Although they have lost 
much of their zest in the present day, from the foibles 
of society and personal oddities they satirise having 
passed away, an amusing picture is still furnished of 
London manners and follies in the i8th century. 
Thus in ' Taste,' a then prevalent custom (not yet 
quite gone out) of attending auctions and buying 
spurious pictures of the old masters and patched up 
specimens of ancient sculpture at high prices, is held 
up to ridicule. The ' Englishman in Paris ' is a 
satire on the absurd imitation of French modes ; in 
the ' Commissary ' and the ' Nabob ' the ' self-made 
man ' of the time is cleverly hit off, and in the 
'Minor,' more serious delinquents. Political quid- 
nuncs, patrons, authors, and popular orators, all come 
under the lash of this English Aristophanes. 

The versatile talent of Garrick, not confined to 
acting, displayed itself also in light comic pieces and 
alterations of plays. He shared with Colman the OfCol- 
c»fe)'osif!on of the ' Clandestine Marriage,' and had others, 
also 'attributed to him the amusing piece of ' High 
Life below Stairs,' of which the authorship has been 
more recently assigned to the Rev. James Townley.^ 

While the walk of low comedy was thus cultivated 
by Fielding, Foote, and Garrick, genteel comedy 
held on its way in the plays that took their direction 
from the 'Careless Husband' of Gibber. Comedy 

1 Biographia Dra77iatica, vol. iii. p. 302. The production of 
High Life below Stairs (1759) on the Edinburgh stage met with 
a decided opposition from the footmen, who raised repeated riots 
in the playhouse and threatened the Hves of the performers. 



200 



V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 



Senti- 
mental 
comedy 
not so 
popular 
as come- 
dy of a 
more 
stirring 
kind. 



of pure sentiment, the co^nMie larmoyante of the 
French, never quite suited the taste of a British 
audience, and there was generally Introduced in the 
plot and conduct of the piece a certain amount of 
bustle and surprise, deriving rather from a Spanish 
than a French source, and a lively and occasionally 
free style of dialogue. The ' Suspicious Husband ^ 
of Dr. Hoadly, Murphy's 'Way to Keep Him' and 
' All in the Wrong,' the ' Jealous Wife ' of the elder 
Colman, and the ' Clandestine Marriage,' were plays 
of this sort.^ Macklin's ' Man of the World' is a 
rare example of a perfectly natural observation of all 
the dramatic unities. It Is carefully composed as to 
development of plot and In Its dialogue and diction. 
It was at first very unnecessarily refused to be licensed 
in London, and was brought out in Dublin. The 
* Man of the World ' is more remarkable for striking 
though exaggerated delineation of character and for 
contrast of character, than for plot or story ; Its suc- 
cess on the stage materially depending on the repre- 
sentation of Sir Pertinax. ^ 

However at times modified to suit the popular 
taste, genteel sentimental comedy continued to be 
regarded by many critics as the legitimate style of 
the comic drama when Dr. Goldsmith's plays first 

^ The comedy of the Jealous Wife, although indebted in several 
particulars to the Careless Husbajid of Gibber, is an improvement 
on its model both as a reading and as an acting play. Lord 
Trinket's use of French phrases in conversation has a precedent 
in Gibber's Lord Foppington, and still earlier in the talk of the 
two kings of Brentford in the Rehearsal — 

First King. You must begin, ma foil 

Second King. Sweet sir, pardonnez-jjioi. 

Bayes. Mark that ; I make 'em botli speak French to show their breeding. 



CKAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 20r 

appeared. Kelly's sentimental comedy of ' False 
Delicacy ' was brought out with much approval by 
Garrick at Drury Lane in the same year that Gold- 
smith's 'Good-natured Man' was produced at Covent 
Garden, although Kelly's play has since fallen into 
oblivion. 

When I undertook, (says Goldsmith in his preface to the 
' Good-Natured Man,') to write a comedy, I confess I was 
strongly prepossessed in favour of the poets of the last age, 
and strove to imitate them. The term 'genteel comedy' 
was then unknown amongst us, and Httle more was desired 
by an audience than nature and humour, in whatever walks 
of life they were most conspicuous. The author of the fol- 
lowing scenes never imagined that more would be expected 
of him, and therefore to delineate character has been his 
principal aim. 

This play, not dealing much in fashionable senti- Gold 
ment, was also deficient in stirring incident though 
strong: in development of character, and it made no i^atured 

^. . -^ Man and 

great impression on the public. She 

The comedy of ' She Stoops to Conquer,' full of Conquer, 
broad humour rather than wit, and with a fair allow- 
ance of bustling incident and surprise, was more suc- 
cessful than its predecessor. Aided by Foote's ridicule 
of sentimental comedy in his amusing performance 
of ' Piety in Pattens,' which was brought out in the 
same year, it obtained a victory over its sentimental 
rivals.^ The humours of Tony Lumpkin and Mrs. 
Hardcastle, the comical plot from which the piece 
takes its name, and the easy flow of the dialogue, at 

1 In his dedication to Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith says; — 'The 
undertaking a comedy not merely sentimental was very dangerous ; 
and Mr. Colman, who saw this piece in its various stages, always 
thought it so.' 



smith's 
Good- 



202 VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART, [book I. 

once made ' She Stoops to Conquer ' a favourite and 

stock play. 

Sheri- Since the ' Provoked Husband ' nothing had ap- 

Rivals peared. equal to this comedy of Goldsmith; but it 

^^^ was now to be capped by the two famous comedies 

for of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the ' Rivals ' and the 

1775. ' School for Scandal.' While both of these are very 

carefully composed as regards style and diction, 

the dialogue of the ' Rivals ' is easier and less 

artificial than that of the * School for Scandal,' in 

which the play of wit and repartee, occasionally 

running Into elaborate conceits, is so constant as to 

be almost fatiguing. Without the coarseness of 

Congreve, the ' School for Scandal ' has all his 

brilliancy. The ' Rivals ' nearly failed at first from 

the bad acting of the representative of Sir Lucius 

O'Trigger, and from the lengthiness of some of the 

scenes, which were judiciously pruned. It then rose 

to the place in public favour it so well deserves.^ 

The ' School for Scandal ' had from the first an 

uninterrupted success, and the echo of the uproarious 

laughter that greeted the celebrated screen-scene in 

the fourth act still lingers at Drury Lane. 

The story and conduct of the plot is not the forte 
of Mr. Sheridan's comedies, which are much stronger 
in the development of character, and in dialogue 
and ludicrous incident. It is no disparagement to 
Sheridan that he may have borrowed a few hints from 
the congenial writings of Shakespeare, Fielding, or 
Moliere. Thus in the * Rivals ' Mrs. Malaprop 

^ Moore's Life of Sheridan^ vol. i. p. 136. 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 



takes liberties with the English language in a similar 
though more decided manner than Slipslop in * Joseph 
Andrews/ a novel which has also furnished one or 
two hints for the scandal of Lady Sneerwell and 
Mrs. Candour ; Sir Lucius O'Trigger and Acres 
recall ' with a difference ' Sir Toby Belch and Sir 
Andrew Aguecheek, while in the ' School for 
Scandal ' Charles and Joseph Surface have a family 
likeness to Tom Jones and Blifil. 

That Mr. Sheridan was of the unsentimental 
faction in comedy is clearly shown in both pieces ; 
in the ' School for Scandal ' by the treatment of the 
Tartuffe ' man of sentiment,' Joseph Surface, and in 
the ' Rivals ' by the satirical delineation of the 
romantic Lydia Languish and the sensitive Falkland. 
Indeed some will be of opinion that in the character 
of the rakish and extravagant Charles Surface, when 
regarded as the accepted lover of the amiable Maria, 
the ' School for Scandal ' goes too far in the opposite 
direction.^ The superior merit of the play lies in 
its witty and satirical delineation of the scandalous 
college of Sir Benjamin Backbite, Lady Sneerwell 
and their friends, and in the effective dramatic situ- 



. ^ It seems a just criticism on the conduct of the story in the 
School for Scandal \}cv2X ih^ \N^o principal lovers, Charles Surface 
and Maria, meet for the first time in the play in the last scene of 
the fifth act. Their first appearance and conversation in this 
scene might have almost suggested the commencement of Puff's 
tragedy in the Critic : — 

Enter Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Walter Raleigh. 

Sir Christopher. True, gallant Raleigh ! 
Dangle. What, had they been talking before ? 
Puff, Oh yes, all the way as they came along. 



204 VIEW OF LFfERArURE AND ART. [book I. 

ations, particularly that to which the hypocritical 
conduct of Joseph Surface gives occasion. 

The little comedy of the 'Critic/ an imitation 
adapted to Sheridan's own time of the Duke of 
Critic. Buckingham's ' Rehearsal,' is a clever satire,, abound- 
ing with humour and sarcasm, on the attempts of his 
contemporar)^ rivals in dramatic writing, and taking 
note by the way of the tricks of literary quacks and 
puffing advertisements.^ 

Subsequent to the appearance of the * Rivals ' and 
the * School for Scandal,' no play of surpassing ex- 
cellence in this line of the drama has been produced. 
Later The plays of Richard Cumberland, a writer of ver- 
dies. satile though rather heavy talent, amount in number 

to about fifty, of which the ' West Indian ' and the 

* Wheel of Fortune ' are regarded as the best.^ The 

* Belle's Stratagem ' of Mrs. Cowley (the Anna 
Matilda of the Delia Cruscans) is a pleasant and 
rather humorous genteel comedy. Morton's ' Cure 
for the Heart-ache ' and ' Speed the Plough ' are 

^ Sentimental comedy receives its share of ridicule in the Critic, 
as in the first scene : — 

Mr. Sfieer gives Dangle two manusc7'ipts. 

Dangle [reading). ' Bursts into tears and exit.' What, is this a tragedy? 

Sneer. No, that's a genteel comedy, not a translation, only taken frofn the 
Frmch. It is written in a style which they have lately tried to' 
run down ; the true sentimental, and nothing ridiculous in it 
from the beginning to the end. 

2 Cumberland was said to have been singled out by Sheridan 
for satirical delineation in the character of Sir Fretful Plagiary in 
the Critic. If so, considering the practice of contemporary play- 
writers, not excepting the author of Fiza?'ro, he was somewhat 
hardly dealt with by his brilliant rival, whose satire, it may be 
charitable to suppose, was general rather than personal. 



CHAP. VII.] THE DRAMA. 205 

entertaining and well- written plays. The ' Heir-at- 
Law ' of the younger Colman (tracing in part to the 
' Bourgeois Gentilhomme ' of Moliere) is a humorous 
comedy, bordering on farce. In the ' Honeymoon' 
of Tobin there is a meritorious study apparent of 
the style of the Beaumont and Fletcher school ; the 
study of the early dramatists, begun in the last 
years of the i8th century, having had a beneficial 
influence and borne fruit in the field of comedy as 
well as of tragedy. Mr. Sheridan Knowles' acting 
plays of the 'Hunchback,' the 'Love-Chase' and 
others, are written in a sort of composite manner, 
recurring in certain particulars to the elder style, and 
showing something of its richness and strength. The 
comedies and comediettas of Douglas Jerrold are 
distinguished by wit and brilliancy of dialogue ; but 
their defect in dramatic development of character will 
stand in the way of their permanent success on the 
stage as stock or acting plays. 

It must be admitted that during the first half of Comic 

- I'll drama 

the present century the comic muse has rather 
drooped than enjoyed a vigorous life. Whether it 
be that the hereditary follies and minor vices of 
human nature and the broad peculiarities of m^anners 
have been already used up as materials for comedy 
by preceding authors, or that men now keep their 
foibles more in the background, or from whatever 
other cause, the later attempts in the line of the 
comic drama have been, with few exceptions, pieces 
of no great importance, the chief object of which is 
to draw subject for merriment from the current affec- 
tations of society and the passing follies of the day. 



no vigo- 
rous 
existence. 



206 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book f. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

(PERIODICALS AND ESSAYS.) 

Periodical Literature from the end of the reign of Aniie to 
the Rambler of. Johnson — Idler — World — Mirror and 
Lounger of Mackenzie — Edinburgh and Quarterly Re- 
views make a new era in periodical writing- — Separate 
Essays on general subjects, of Warton, Hume, Burke, 
Mackintosh, Price, and others, 

1708- Towards the close of the reign of Queen Anne the 
"^^^^ political contest between the two great parties of 
Whig and Tory was so keenly maintained that lite- 
rature was drawn into and nearly lost in the vortex 
of politics. The pens of the ablest authors of the 
day were engaged upon one side or the other, some- 
times in writing for periodical party papers, some- 
times in composing pamphlets and essays for 
separate publication. Addison's 'Spectator' steered 
indeed tolerably clear of party; but in the ' Tatler' 
and.' Guardian' views of politics were introduced by 
Sir Richard Steele which, although of a mild com- 
plexion, were such as induced the Tories to start 
another paper, the ' Examiner,' in defence of their 
principles and tenets. The ' Examiner' was sup- 
ported by the writing of Swift, Prior, and Lord 
Bolingbroke, and in its turn gave origin to the 
* Whig Examiner ' and * Medley,' the chief contribu- 
tors to which were Addison and Steele. These two 



CHAP. VIII.] PERIODICALS AND ESSAYS. 207 

friends appeared also as authors of separate writings 
on the Whig side, the most noted of which was the 

* Crisis,' by Steele ; a pamphlet so exasperating to 
the majority of the House of Commons as to cause 
the author's expulsion from the House. On the 
opposite side of the question appeared Swift's ' Con- 
duct of the Allies,' and a variety of well-reasoned 
pamphlets by Defoe ; while Dr. Arbuthnot's able 
and well-sustained parody, ' Law is a bottomless 
pit, or the History of John Bull,' succeeded in 
turning the laugh against Marlborough and the 
Whigs by its humorous and ludicrous representation 
of the French war, the parties to it, and attendant 
circumstances.^ 

After the accession of George I. politics continued 
to rule the hour, and the rancour of party infused 
itself into literary writing of every kind. Thus the 

* Censor ' of Theobald, the ' Plain Dealer ' of Aaron 

' The History of John Bull is written in a good English style, 
with the use occasionally of a Scotch idiomatic expression. ' The 
effect of this satire,' says Sir Walter Scott, ' was wonderful. It 
was adapted in point of style to the meanest capacity ; yet the 
ingenuity of the allusions and the comic humour of the expressions 
delighted the best informed. The structure of the piece was also 
admirably calculated to attain the desired end. It was scarce 
possible so effectually to dim the lustre of Marlborough's splendid 
achievements as by parodying them under the history of a suit 
conducted by a wily attorney, who made every advantage gained 
over the defendant a reason for protracting law procedure and 
enhancing the expense of his client. By this representation of 
the war the public mind was swayed from consideration of its 
brilliant success, and instructed to regard it as a mere matter of 
profit and loss, in which the general and the Dutch were the 
gainers, while all expenses fell upon the British.' — Swift's Works^ 
edited by Walter Scott, vol. vi. p. 236. 



I7I9 



2o8 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

Hill and Bond, and many other periodical papers of 
this reign, issued from the press to enjoy for the most 
part but a short existence.-^ The ' Free Thinker' of 
Ambrose Phillips handled miscellaneous subjects 
with more reasoning and wit than any of its contem- 
poraries. The ' Terrse Filius ' of Nicholas Amhurst 

1 721. contained a series of rather scandalous attacks on 
the manners and institutions and Jacobite tendencies 
of the University of Oxford. The ' True Briton,' 
of which the Duke of Wharton was author and 
Richardson the novelist printer, displayed some 
ability and great violence of party spirit. 

The 'Craftsman,' begun in 1726 and conducted 
by Amhurst with Lord Bolingbroke and other 
tories as contributors, carried on for some years 
an able opposition to the measures of Sir Robert 

1729. Walpole. The * Intelligencer,' a weekly paper 
written by Dr. Thomas Sheridan and Dean Swift, 
was published in Dublin.^ The first number, 
written by Swift, contains the following character- 
istic account of the object and plan of the ' Intelli- 
gencer : ' — ' There is a society lately established, 
who, at great expense, have erected an office of 
intelligence, from which they are to receive weekly 
information of all important events and singularities 



^ Essays illustrative of the various periodical papers published 
betwee?t the close of the eighth volume of the '■ Spectator ' and the 
year 1809 \ by Nathan Drake, M.D., London, 1809. 

2 Letter^ Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope, June 12, 1731. Such pe- 
riodical papers or essays as the present writer has thought worthy 
of mention in the text are to be considered as having been 
pubhshed in London unless otherwise specified. 



CHAP. VIII.] PERIODICALS AND ESSAYS. 209 

which this famous metropolis can furnish. Strict 
injunctions are given to have the truest informa- 
tion : in order to which certain quaHfied persons 
are employed to attend upon duty in their several 
posts ; some at the playhouse, others in churches, 
some at balls, assemblies, coffee-houses, and meet- 
ings for quadrille ; some at the several courts of 
justice, both spiritual and temporal ; some at the 
college, some upon my Lord Mayor and Aldermen, 
in their public affairs ; lastly, some to converse with 
favourite chambermaids, and to frequent those ale- 
houses and brandy-shops where the footmen of great 
families meet in a morning ; only the barracks and 
Parliament-house are excepted, because we have yet 
found no enfans perdus bold enough to venture their 
persons at either. Out of these and some other 
store-houses we hope to gather materials enough to 
inform or divert or correct or vex the town.' 

In a periodical paper entitled ' Common Sense,' 1737. 
the Earl of Chesterfield wrote a series of essays on 
subjects connected with manners and taste. The 
* Memoirs of the Society of Grub Street,' a satirical 1731. 
paper of some humour, is said to have first suggested 
the ' Gentleman's Magazine' to its projector, Edward Gentle- 
Cave. This celebrated monthly magazine, the Maga- 
longest lived of any British periodical, owed its ^^"^* 
position and standing to Cave and to Samuel John- 
son. When Johnson first came to London as an 
adventurer in literature, he applied to and was en- 
gaged by Cave as a regular coadjutor in this work, ^I'^T^ 
to which he subsequently contributed a variety 
of original essays and biographies. The * Scots' 

p 



2IO VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

1739- Magazine ' was commenced soon after at Edinburgh, 
and without displaying the talent of its London 
contemporary, was conducted for a number of years 
with sober good sense ; producing some original 
writing, and notices (afterwards valuable) of passing 
events and local history. 

Henry Fielding was the principal author of the 
Cham- ' Champion,' a well- written series of essays published 
other thrice a week ; the no7n de plume of the editor 
calTof" being Captain Hercules Vinegar, and the various 
Fielding, departments of the paper being distributed, after the 
manner of the ' Spectator,' amongst the members of 
the Vinegar family.^ In one of the papers he 
observes, that ' Short occasional essays on the follies, 
vices, humours, controversies and amusements of 
the age, have been esteemed both so useful and 
entertaining that not a library in the three king- 
doms, and scarce a lady's closet, is without those 
great originals, the '' Tatler " and '' Spectator/' And 
that no subsequent pieces have obtained the like 
success is perhaps as much owing to an opinion 
that those volumes had exhausted all the wit and 
humour the subject was capable of, as that the 
merits of Steele and Addison are above comparison 
and imitation. But there is a sort of craft attending 
vice and absurdity ; and when hunted out of society 
in one shape they seldom want address to re- 
insinuate themselves in another. Hence the modes 

1 The Champion Papers were collected in 1741. One of these 
papers (the 'Vision,' May 24, 1740) is the first draught of one of 
the best of Fielding's minor productions, the ' Journey from this 
world to the next.' 



CHAP. VIII.] PERIODICALS AND ESS A YS. 2 1 1 

of license vary almost as often as those of dress, and 
consequently require continual observation to detect 
and expose them anew.' In the ' True Patriot' and 
* Jacobite Journal' Fielding wielded his pen for the i745- 
government in well-informed essays and sallies of 
humour. Fielding's essays in these various papers, 1752. 
and in the ' Covent Garden Journal,' where he gave 
himself more to literature and the drama, were pro- 
bably superior to any other periodical writing, except 
the ' Free Thinker ' of Phillips, between the time of 
the ' Spectator' and the ' Rambler.' 

The ' Monthly Review,' on which the ill-requited 
labour of Oliver Goldsmith was bestowed, and the 
' Critical Review,' conducted for many years by 
Smollett, were commenced the one in 1749, the 
other in 1756. The 'Female Spectator' and the 
' Parrot ' of Eliza Haywood, weekly papers of a de- 
sultory and gossiping character, were popular in 
their day.^ The ' Student,' a monthly rniscellany 
published at Oxford, kept aloof from party politics, 
and successfully devoted itself to general literature 
and criticism. 

The ablest periodical and the most sustained in 
its style of writing that appeared subsequent to the 
' Spectator ' was the ' Rambler,' the essays in which Rambler, 



' To each number of the Parrot was added a * Compendium of 
the Times ' or News-Letter ; a postscript to the first of which 
(Aug. 2, 1746) contains a narrative of the execution for high 
treason of James Dawson at Kennington Common, and of the 
simultaneous death of the lady to whom he was engaged to be 
married, striking from its unaffected simplicity, and afterwards put 
into verse by Shen stone. 

p 2 



212 VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

were supplied, with few exceptions, from the in- 
tellectual store of Johnson. It was published in 
a small folio form on Tuesday and Saturday of 
each week between March 1750 and March 1752, 
the price of each number being twopence.^ Its brief 
but valuable disquisitions on the great principles of 
moral and religious duty are well known. The 
papers on manners and character are distinguished 
by a discriminating and often satirical observation 
of life, somewhat tinged by the too frequently sombre 
colouring of the author's temperament. His humour, 
when he condescended to be humorous, has a gra- 
vity peculiar to Itself. The moral Apologues and 
eastern tales in this work, without much individu- 
ality of character and imagery, are expressed in 
elegant language, and, while avoiding the lengthi- 
ness of Rasselas, are interesting in their story. The 
Allegories are hardly equal to the Apologues, and give 
an Impression of elaborate and excessive Ingenuity. 

The only literary assistance received by Johnson 
for the ' Rambler ' consisted of three papers by ladles 
(Mrs. Chapone, Miss Talbot, and Miss Elizabeth 
Carter), and one by Richardson the novelist ; the 
great moralist being probably of opinion that their 
productions were most adapted to relieve the uni- 
formity of his own more didactic and balanced style 
of writing. 

At their first composition the essays in the 
' Rambler ' seem not to have received more polishing 

* A duodecimo edition of the Rambler was published at Edin- 
burgh ahnost immediately after the appearance of the papers in 
London. 



CHAP. viii.J PERIODICALS AND ESSA YS. 2 1 3 

than was requisite for printing ; for the second and 
third editions they were very carefully corrected and 
altered, as if the author had intended thus thoroughly 
to model them both as to matter and style.^ 

Such was the success of the ' Rambler ' that some 
months after it closed Dr. Hawkes worth was encou- 
raged to commence the ' Adventurer,' being him- Adven- 
self the principal contributor. He was aided by 
Johnson, who in a letter requesting Dr. Joseph 
Warton's co-operation remarks, that the papers 
should consist of pieces of imagination, pictures of 
life, and disquisitions of literature.'^ The literary 
disquisitions fell to Dr. Warton. Dr. Hawkes- 
worth's papers in the two other departments follow 
{hated passibus cBqtcis) the style of writing of his 
coadjutor. 

The essays of the ' Adventurer ' and those also of 
the ' Idler,' which followed It, have more relation to Idler, 
common life and manners and a greater popularity 
of tone than those of the ' Rambler,' and they were 
at the time more generally popular. The papers In 
the ' Idler' are short and not much elaborated, the 
chief contributor being Dr. Johnson, assisted In 
occasional essays by Mr. Thomas Warton and Sir 
Joshua Reynolds. One of the ' Idlers' (No. 70) is a 
defence of ' the use of hard words,' an often-repeated 
objection to the author's style : * Difference of 
thought,' says he, ' will produce difference of lan- 
guage. He that thinks with more extent than 

^ Preface to the Rambler^ by Alexander Chalmers. 

2 Preface to the Adventurer ^ in Berguer's British Essayists, vol. 



xxui. 



1753- 



214 VIEPV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

another will want words of a larger meaning; he 
that thinks with more subtilty will seek for terms 
of more nice discrimination ; and where is the 
wonder, since words are but the images of things, 
that he who never knew the originals should not 
know the copies ?' The style of Johnson in the 

* Idler' is easier, less balanced and drawn out than 
it is in the ' Rambler.' To show perhaps that he 
could dispense with big words when it was proper 
to do so, two of his papers consist of epistles from 
' Betty Broom,' a serving-maid, in which the con- 
struction and language are particularly simple and 
plain, reminding one of Hercules holding the distaff 
of Omphale. 

The ' World,' a weekly periodical paper which 
^756. ^as continued for four years, devoted itself chiefly 
to the reprehension by ridicule and irony of 
the fashionable vices and affectations of the day, 
and to the enforcement of the lesser social duties. 
The contributor of about half of the papers In the 

* World ' was Mr. Edward Moore, the other essays 
being contributed by Horace Walpole, Richard 
Owen Cambridge, Lord Chesterfield, Soame Jenyns, 
and Lord Hailes.^ The twenty-four essays by Lord 
Chesterfield are considered superior in satirical 

^ A letter from Walpole to Mr. George Montague (July 17, 
1753) concludes : 'Adieu. I enclose a Woidd to you, which, by 
a story I shall tell you, I find is called mine. I met Mrs. Clive 
(the actress) two nights ago, and told her I had been in the 
meadows, but would walk no more there, for there was all the 
world. " Well," says she, " and don't you like the World ? I 
hear it was very clever last Thursday.'' All I know is, that you 
will meet some of your acquaintance there/ 



CKAP. VIII.] PERIODICALS AND ESSAYS. 215 

humour and point to the others ; and as regards 
their sentiment and moral tendency they show the 
noble author In a more favourable light than his 
larger and better-known work. In one of them he 
says (In a letter to the nominal editor, Mr. Fltz- 
Adam), ' I consider you as supplemental to the law 
of the land. I take your authority to begin where 
the power of the law ends. The law Is Intended to 
stop the progress of crimes by punishing them ; 
your paper seems calculated to check the course of 
follies by exposing them. May you be more suc- 
cessful in the latter than the law Is In the former!' ^ 
This paper exposes the absurdities and expense a 
quiet English family are led into by a visit to 
Paris ; another, In a vein of fine irony, conveys a 
warning to fair readers of novels who sacrifice their 
virtue to what they consider sentiment.^ Three 
papers are devoted to the exposure and ridicule of 
after-dinner toping and drunkenness, another to the 
restraining of anger and passion, and another to 
duelling. ' Honour,' says Lord Chesterfield, ' that 
sacred name, which ought to mean the spirit, the 



^ World, No. 18. 

^ No. 25. The heroine of this paper, the daughter of a clergy- 
man, was a student of the old romances, and painted fans, &c., 
from the stones of Ovid's Meiajuorphoses. ' My heart,^ says she, 
' was tender, and my sentiments were delicate ; perhaps too much 
so for my rank in life. This disposition led me to study chiefly 
those treasures of divine honour, spotless virtue, and refined 
sentiment, the voluminous romances of the last century ; senti- 
ments from which I thank heaven I have never deviated. From 
a sympathising softness of soul, how often have I wept over those 
affecting distresses !' . . . 



2l6 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

supererogation of virtue, is by custom profaned, 
reduced, and shrunk to mean only a readiness to 
fight a duel upon either a real or an imaginary 
affront, and not to cheat at play. No vices nor im- 
moralities whatsoever blast this fashionable charac- 
ter, but rather on the contrary dignify and adorn it ; 
and what should banish a man from all society re- 
commends him in general to the best' ^ 
1754- The ' Connoisseur,' also a weekly paper, was 

^75^- written chiefly by George Colman the dramatist 
and Bonnel Thornton, with the occasional assistance 
of the poet Cowper, orator Henley, and the Earl of 
Corke. It disclaimed subjects of fine art, which its 
title naturally suggests, and aimed to strike at the 
follies of mankind, and to teach the importance of 
self-knowledge. 
Gold- In the ' Bee,' the ' Public Ledger,' and the * Gen- 

essays, tleman's Journal,' first appeared most of those 
cleverly-written and humorous essays by Goldsmith, 
on subjects of life and manners, which were after- 
1765. wards published together in a small volume with 
the motto Collecta Revirescitnt. From the preface to 
this collection it appears that anonymous essays 
were at that time very liable to be dug out from 
periodical publications and turned to account by the 
finders of these hidden treasures. 

The commencement of the reign of George III. 
was, like that of George I., remarkable for the 
keenness of its party warfare. Periodical writing 
took the prevailing political tone, subjects of general 
literature, life and manners, being scantily touched 

^ World, No. 114, 



CHAP. VIII.] PERIODICALS AND ESSAYS. 21 7 

upon prior to the appearance in Edinburgh of the Mirror 
' Mirror,' and after it of the ' Lounger.' The essays Lounger. 
in the 'Mirror' were pubHshed on Tuesdays and ^'^'^^' 
Saturdays, those In the * Lounger ' on Saturdays 
only. Labouring under the disadvantage of a 
northern locaHty and a more Hmited experience of 
Hfe, these papers were nevertheless highly creditable 
to the talents, refined taste, and minute delinea- 
tion of character evinced by their authors. The 
chief of these was the ' Man of Feeling,' Henry 
Mackenzie. Without the idiomatic style and vivid 
touches of Addison and Steele, or the ethical power 
of the * Rambler,' the writings of Mackenzie in the 
* Mirror ' and ' Lounger ' display a delicacy of sen- 
timent and justness of thought, mixed with a flow of 
quiet humour, that place him well among the British 
essayists ; while the short tales of pathos introduced 
by him, 'La Roche' and ' Louisa Venoni ' in the 
' Mirror,' and ' Father Nicholas ' in the ' Lounger,' 
are both interesting and suggestive. The other 
writers were (as well as Mr. Mackenzie) connected 
with the Edinburgh law courts ; leaders of opinion 
to some extent in a society of increasing refine- 
ment though of inferior intellectual strength to that 
of the Adam Smiths, Humes and Robertsons, who 
immediately preceded them. 

The ' Observer ' of Cumberland takes somewhat 
different ground from its predecessors ; disquisitions 
on religion and morals alternating with fictitious 
narrative and the history of the Greek drama. The 
most valuable portion of the work is probably that 
relating to the Greek comedy. 



2l8 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [kook i. 

The ' Microcosm ' was a clever juvenile collection 
of essays on manners and literature by a set of 
young Etonians, comprising George Canning, J. and 
R. Smith, and John Frere. The ' Essays,' moral 
and literary, of Dr. Vicesimus Knox, and his ' Winter 
Evenings, or Lucubrations on Life and Letters,' 
were popular in their time, and are included in some 
editions of the British Essayists. 

The subsequent periodical works up to the com- 
mencement of the 'Edinburgh Review' in 1802 it 
would be tedious to refer to. The essays in the 
' Speculator,' by Dr. Nathan Drake, afterwards ap- 
peared in his ' Literary Hours.' The ' Watchman ' 
of Mr. Coleridge stopped at the tenth number. 
The ' Antijacobin ' was edited by Mr. Gifford, and 
supported by Canning and other adherents of the 
tory party. The clever and amusing writing of a 
political tendency in this weekly paper, especially 
its poetical contributions and squibs, which were 
collected in a volume, obtained for the ' Antijacobin ' 
a good standing in a literary point of view. 
Edin- In 1802 a new era in periodical writing was in- 

burgh. 

Review, augurated by the first appearance of the ' Edinburgh 
Review.' Its origin is due to the Rev. Sydney 
Smith, Francis Jeffrey, and Henry Brougham, then 
resident in Edinburgh ; its first editor (if he might 
be so termed) being Sydney Smith. He was suc- 
ceeded almost immediately by Mr. Jeffrey, who 
continued to edit the ' Review' till 1829, when the 
editorial department was taken up by Mr. Macvey 
Napier, professor of legal conveyancing in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh. In the advertisement to the 



CHAP. VIII.] PERIODICALS AND ESSAYS. 219 

first number the conductors of the Review propose 
being more scrupulous than had been the custom 
previously in their selection of works to be reviewed, 
' confining their notice in a great degree to works 
that either have attained or deserve a certain por- 
tion of celebrity/ The articles were at first much 
shorter, and contained less politics than was after- 
wards the case. The original plan of the work 
was considerably modified by the practice of in- 
troducing disquisitions or essays on matters and 
questions of interest, having little more reference to 
the book or books at the head of the article than a 
certain community of subject. From this source have 
proceeded several more or less valuable collections 
of contributions, chiefly on literary subjects, by 
Lord Jeffrey, Mr. Sydney Smith, Lord Brougham, 
Lord Macaulay, and others. Among these collected 
contributions to the ' Edinburgh Review,' the Essays 
by Lord Macaulay, a species of composition very 
suitable to his turn of mind, stand out conspicuously. 

The ' Quarterly Review ' was started in London Quarterly 
upon the same general plan as the * Edinburgh,' 1809.' 
under the auspices of Messrs. Canning, George 
Ellis, and J. Wilson Croker.^ It was conducted by 
Mr. Gifford as editor till 1824, when he was suc- 
ceeded by John Gibson Lockhart. 

Neither the tory politics of the ' Quarterly ' nor 
the whig politics of the ' Edinburgh Review ' have 
materially interfered with the exercise of their criti- 
cal judgment on literary performances, although this 

1 'Lockha.rt's IJ/e 0/ Scoff. 



2 20 V/FIV OF LITEFATURE AND ARF. [book I. 

has been occasionally alleged ; while their enforce- 
ment of certain incontrovertible general rules of 
writing and the regard evinced by both reviews to 
morality and decency have upon the whole exercised 
a beneficial influence on the productions of the 
press and put a check upon extravagance of thought 
and sentiment and licentiousness of writing. It 
may be questioned, on the other hand, whether that 
dogmatism engendered by the very position of a 
reviewer, or editor of a well-established review, such 
as the ' Edinburgh ' or ' Quarterly,' may not have 
tended, especially in the province of poetry and 
imaginative writing, to lead both of those critical 
journals to analyse the defects and beauties of new 
and original compositions too much according to 
preconceived notions, to measure such compositions 
too much by conventional standards, and thus induce 
hasty and over-confident judgments. In the case of 
Wordsworth's poetry the frequently pronounced 
condemnatory decision of Mr. Jeffrey was set aside 
by the opinion of the succeeding generation ; and 
the severe treatment in the pages of the ' Quarterly ' 
of the productions of Keats met with the -same 
fate. The position of a reviewer seems to require 
that his decision should be given with a certain 
tone of infallibility ; but the experience of both of 
the leading reviews in the earlier portion of the 
present century has made it sufficiently evident that 
their judgments are liable occasionally to be reversed.^ 

1 It is beyond the scope of the present work to enter upon the 
history and merits of all the various periodicals, quarterly, monthly, 



CHAP. VIII.] PERIODICALS AND ESSAYS. 22 1 

The most valuable portion of the periodical pub- 
lications noticed in this chapter undoubtedly consists 
of the papers or short essays on subjects of litera- 
ture, morals, and manners. Longer essays or dis- Essays in 
quisitions, published originally in a separate form, fof^^^^^ 
more sustained and elaborate in statement, argument 
and illustration, take a still more noticeable place in 
British miscellaneous literature. Thus Dr. Joseph 
Warton's ' Essay on the Genius and Writings of 
Pope,' the first volume of which appeared in 1756 
and the second in 1782, is deservedly regarded as a 
work of great learning and critical acumen, although 
the conclusion arrived at in the second and last 
volume as to the position of Pope among British 
poets may be thought by some readers inconsistent 
with his premises in the first part of the essay. 

Mr. Hume, the historian, became celebrated as an 
essayist by his ' Essays, Moral, Political and Literary/ 
in 1742, a second series appearing ten years aften^ 
The shorter essays, which travel over politics, politi- 
cal economy, philosophy, literature and taste, are re- 
markable for lucidity of style, refinement of thought, 
acuteness and finesse of reasoning. The sceptical 
philosophy of Hume chimed in with the fashionable 

and weekly, of the 19th century. Publications such as the 
Foreign Quarterly and North British Review, Blackwood's, the 
New Monthly, and other periodicals, which have been the medium 
of muth clever and able, though desultory composition, by authors 
of undoubted talent, belong more or less to contemporary literature. 
1 All the shorter essays are included in the first volume of the 
octavo edition of Hume's Essays; the second volume containing 
his Inquiry concerning the Btiman Understandings Principles of 
Morals, and Natural History of Religion. 



2 22 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [bo6k i. 

doctrines of the day in France and Germany, where 
it acquired and has retained a great reputation.^ 
The essays of Dr. Johnson in the ' Rambler ' and 

1770. Dr. Beattie's essay ' On the nature and immutabiHty 
of Truth in opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism ' 
had the merit of defending the cause of revealed 
religion and the higher principles of moral duty 
against the sceptical reasonings of Hume. 

Dr. Gilbert Stuart's ' View of Society in Europe 

1778. in its progress from rudeness to refinement' is an 
historical essay of considerable research and interest, 
which may possibly have led the way to later in- 
quiries on the same subject. Mr. Burke's ' Vindi- 
cation of Natural Society,' a satirical parody on the 
philosophical opinions and reasonings of Lord Boling- 
broke, in which his lordship's style is very happily 
imitated, and the ' Inquiry into the origin of our 
ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful,' may be seve- 
rally set down as essays worthy of the versatile ^P 
genius and powers of their author. The ' Reflections 
on the French Revolution ' is in fact a brilliant 
essay on the important transactions of that time, in 
the form of a ' Letter intended to have been sent 
to a gentleman in Paris.' The ' Vindiciae Gallicse ' 
of Sir James Mackintosh is a well-written essay in 

1 In a letter of the Hon. Horace Walpole from Paris (Oct 19, 

1765) to Mr. T. Brand of the Hoo, he says : ' For Lord L , if 

he should come hither and turn free-thinker once more, he would 
be reckoned the most agreeable man in France — next to Mr. 
Hume, who is the only thing in the world that they believe in 
implicitly.' 



1790. 



CHAP. VIII.] PERIODICALS AND ESSAYS. 223 

defence of the French Revolution against the accu- 
sations of Mr. Burke. ^ 

It is difficult to form an adequate estimate 
of the amount of exposition, argument and illus- 
tration, to be found in compositions which may be 
classed under the head of Essays. Thus Sir Joshua 
Reynolds' Academical ' Discourses,' as well as the 
writings and lectures of Academicians and of other 
persons, are so many essays, often well-digested and 
composed, on Painting and Art generally. 

The first year of the 19th century witnessed the 
appearance of Miss Edgeworth's amusing and 
rambling essay ' On Irish Bulls,' a species of in- 
voluntary wit not confined to Ireland, if the author's 
definition of a bull as consisting In ' a laughable 
confusion of ideas ' be correct. Dr. Nathan Drake's 
two series of Essays ' biographical, critical and his- 
torical,' illustrative of the British Essayists, from 
the ' Tatler ' onwards, are models of industrious and 
curious research. Following Walpole's ' Essay on 
Modern Gardening ' in the fourth volume of his 
' Anecdotes of Painting in England,' we have by 
Sir Uvedale Price several ingenious and fanciful 
' Essays on the Picturesque as compared with the 
Sublime and the Beautiful, and on the use of study- 



^ In the Preface to the Vindicice. Gallicce (1791) Mr. Burke's 
Reflections are eloquently referred to as — ' Argument clothed in 
the most rich and varied imagery, aided by the most pathetic and 
picturesque description, speaking the opulence and powers of 
that mind of which age has neither dimmed the discernment nor 
enfeebled the fancy, neither repressed the ardour nor narrowed 
the range.' 



2 24 V/£PV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

ing pictures for the purpose of improving real land- 
scape ; ' and an essay on ' Landscape Gardening ' by 
Sir Walter Scott, written for the * Quarterly Review.' 
The ' Round Table ' a collection of essays on ' Men 
and Manners,' by W. Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, and 
Hazlitt's lectures and essays on subjects of dramatic 
literature and on Art, are undoubtedly acute and 
discriminating ; though Mr. Hazlitt's judgments on 
men and things, however unhesitatingly pronounced, 
are often liable to question. The essays of Charles 
Lamb (Elia), unique and inimitable in their kind, 
1820- were written in great part for the ' London Maga- 
zine.' They have been since brought together, 
and now form one of the most acceptable of the 
modern contributions to literature of the Essayists 
of Great Britain. 

The ' Encyclopaedia Britannica ' and other collec- 
tions of the same kind contain numerous essays of 
merit and interest, both as regards literary style and 
matter, some of which have been published sepa- 
rately, though many are lost and confounded 
in the mass of compilation and mixed writing of 
which these ponderous works necessarily in great 
measure consist. 



1825. 



CHAP. IX.] EPISTOLARY WRITING. 2 2 



CHAPTER IX. 

EPISTOLARY WRITING; VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. 

/. Qualities of epistolary style — Letters of Swift — Pope — 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu^Gray — Horace Walpole — 
Later epistolary writing — //. Qualities of style for 
travel writing — Books of travels, 

L EPISTOLARY WRITING. 

' The qualities of the epistolary style most fre- Episto- 
quently required are ease and simplicity, an even ^^^ ^ ^ ^' 
flow of unlaboured diction, and an artless arrange- 
ment of obvious sentiments.' ^ These qualities 
appear at first sight so easy of attainment that 
the form of epistolary writing has been adopted 
for many literary purposes other than the com- 
munication by one friend to another at a dis- 
tance of his thoughts and sentiments. Thus in the 
reign of George I. a series of essays on civil and 
religious liberty take the form of ' Letters by Cato ; ' ^ 
a collection of original literary papers by Melmoth, 
the translator of Pliny and Cicero, appear as 1742. 
* Letters on several subjects by Sir Thomas Fitz- 
osborne ; ' and some thirty years later, Archdeacon 

^ The Rambler^ No. 152. 

2 These letters (by J. Trenchard and T. Gordon) were com- 
menced in the London Journal (1720), and afterwards collected 
in four volumes. 



2 26 r/ElV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

Coxe gives to the world his Travels in Switzerland 
in a series of letters to William Melmoth. Richard- 
son and Miss Burney write their novels in the form 
of letters, while Lord Chesterfield brings out a work 
on education and conduct in the shape of letters to 
his son. Goldsmith's ' Citizen of the World ' makes 
its appearance in ' Letters from a Chinese philosopher 
in London to his friends in the East,' and Junius, 
the wonder of his day, for whose mysterious ori- 
ginal the weight of evidence now points to Sir 
Philip Francis, makes a series of letters in a public 
journal, full of declamatory argument and epigram- 
matic point, the vehicle of political invective. In 
more recent times the Reverend Sydney Smith puts 
forth jocular arguments on the Catholic Question in 
* Letters from Peter Plymley to his brother Abraham ; ' 
and Mr. J. G. Lockhart's sketches of Edinburgh 
and its belongings take the shape of ' Letters to his 
kinsfolk by Dr. Peter Morris.' 
English It is evident that such works as these, whatever 

Letter- 

writing, their other merits, cannot be regarded as examples 
of epistolary writing, properly so called. Examples 
of this are to be sought in the published letters 
written to each other by private friends ; of which in 
later English literature there is no lack of examples. 
The letters of Sir William Temple in the reign of 
Charles II. were chiefly on affairs of state, and 
derive their principal interest from the information 
they convey on points of history and diplomacy. 

Of Dean The correspondence of Dean Swift touches upon 

^ ' all subjects. Commencing during his residence with 

Sir William Temple at Moor Park, in the reign of 



CHAP. IX.] EPISTOLARY WRITING. 227 

King William III., it extends through the reigns 
of Queen Anne and George I. and over ten years 
of that of George II. The most important trans- 
actions as well as the most familiar incidents are 
referred to and commented upon in a free idiomatic 
style, with an originality of observation and eccentric 
humour characteristic of the man.^ 

Swift says, in a letter to Mr. Pope, towards the 
close of his life — ' I believe we neither of us ever 
leaned our head upon our left hand to study what 
we should write next' However this may have 

* When Mr. Harley was about to be created Earl of Oxford, 
and Sir Simon Harcourt (then Lord Keeper) Baron Harcourt, 
Swift writes to Secretary St. John (afterwards Lord Boling- 
broke) : — 

Chelsea : May 11, 171 1, 

Sir, — Being convinced by certain ominous prognostics that my 
life is too short to permit me the honour of ever dining another 
Saturday with Sir Simon Harcourt^ knight, or Robert Harley, Esq., 
I beg I may take the last farewell of those two gentlemen to-mor- 
row. I made this request on Saturday last, unfortunately after you 
were gone ; and they, like great statesmen, pretended they could 
do nothing in it without your consent. . . The Keeper alleged you 
could do nothing but when all three were capitularly met, as if you 
could never open but like a parish chest, with the three keys to- 
gether. It grieves me to see the present ministry thus confederated 
to pull down my great spirit. Pray, sir, find an expedient. Finding 
expedients is the business of secretaries of state. I will yield to 
any reasonable conditions not below my dignity. I will not find 
fault with the victuals ; I will restore the water-glass that I stole, 
and solicit for my, lord-keeper's salary. And, sir, to show you I 
am not a person to be safely injured, if you dare refuse me justice 
in this point, I will appear before you in a pudding-sleeve gown, 
I will disparage your snuff, write a lampoon upon Nably Car, dine 
with you upon a foreign post-day ; nay, I will read verses in your 
presence until you snatch them out of my hands. Therefore, 
pray, sir, take pity upon me and yourself. 

Q 2 



2 28 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART.' [book i. 

been in the Dean's correspondence with Pope, his 
letters to his titled female correspondents, as the 
Duchess of Queensberry and the Countess of Orkney, 
were apparently more studied. Thus, in a letter to 
Lady Orkney, who had presented him with a writing- 
table, he says : — 

I must tell your ladyship that I am this moment under 
a very great concern. I was fully convinced that I should 
write with a new spirit by the influence of the materials 
you sent me ; but it is just otherwise : I have not a grain 
of invention, whether out of the confusion which attends 
us when we strive too much to acquit ourselves, or whether 
your pens and ink are sullen, and think themselves disgraced 
since they have changed their owner. I heartily thank 
your ladyship for making me a present that looks like a 
sort of establishment. I plainly see by the contrivance 
that if you were first minister it would have been a 
cathedral. As it is, you have more contributed towards 
fixing me than all the ministry together ; for it is difficult 
to travel with this equipage, and it will be impossible to 
travel or live without it. 

Of Pope '^^^ letters of Pope, justly admired for their 
English style, have most of them been the subject 
of premeditation and revision. In allusion to them 
Dr. Johnson observes : — ' It is one thing to write 
because there is something which the mind wishes 
to discharge, and another to solicit the imagina- 
tion because ceremony or vanity requires some- 
thing to be written.' From the internal evidence 
afforded by his correspondence, Mr. Pope seems to 
have written with a consciousness that his letters 
would come one day before the public eye ; and 
later enquiries show that they were in fact very 
carefully revised and prepared for publication. 



CHAP. IX.] EPISTOLARY WRITING. 229 

Without the eccentricity and frequent abruptness 
of Swift's manner, Pope's letters are full of meaning 
and wit, though often chargeable, like many of the 
Dean's letters, with breathing too much the spirit of 
their own coterie. In several of his letters there is 
an apparent artlessness of manner, probably the 
effect of very careful writing ; as in the letter to 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu where he describes 17 18. 
in exquisite diction the simultaneous death by light- 
ning of two rustic lovers in a hay-field at Stanton- 
Harcourt. 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters have Of Lady 
attained a reputation hardly inferior to that of her Montagu. 
distinguished correspondent. Her letters to Mr. 
Pope are rather more carefully composed than those 
to her female friends. Lady Mary's letters from 
Turkey during Mr. Wortley's embassy, and the 
letters of her middle life in England, are written with 
much vivacity and picturesque colouring, with a 
marvellous talent for seeing the amusing side of 
things, and with a marked absence of reserve. 

The letters from Italy of her ladyship's later life, 
when satiety and disappointment had subdued her 
vivacity of spirit, are in a more sober and (in her 
correspondence with her daughter the Countess of 
Bute) in a more didactic tone. 

The letters of Mr. Gray the poet, which com- Of Gray 
mence when he was a student at Cambridge with ^ ^°^ ' 
the Hon. Horace Walpole, and continue to the year 
of his death, were incorporated in Mason's Memoirs 1771. 
of the life of Gray, prefixed to his Poems. They are 
the letters of a ripe scholar and man of cultivated 



230 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 

and rather fastidious taste, and touch mostly upon 
literature, criticism, and architecture. Gray travelled 
abroad in the company of Walpole, after their leav- 
ing college ; and in his later years visited the north 
of England, Wales, and the Scotch Highlands; his 
observations and impressions in the course of his 
various travels being for the most part set down in 
His ap- his letters.^ He may be considered one of the first 
\\onoi travellers on British ground who appreciated and 
scenery, drew attention to the picturesque beauty of its 
natural scenery ; as to which it is not unworthy of 
remark how certain points of scenery spoken of in 
the language of the modern traveller as grand or 
fine are characterised by Gray as savage, fearful or 
grotesque.^ 

* In a letter from Turin (describing the journey through Savoy 
up the valley of the Are), the fate of Horace Walpole's dog is thus 
related : — ' Mr. Walpole had a little fat black spaniel that he was 
very fond of, which he sometimes used to set down and let it run 
by the chaise side. We were at that time in a very rough road, 
not two yards broad at most ; on one side was a great wood of 
pines, and on the other a vast precipice ; it was noon day, and 
the sun shone bright, when all of a sudden from the wood side 
(which was as steep upwards as the other side was downwards) 
out rushed a great wolf, came close to the head of the horses, 
seized the dog by the throat, and rushed up the hill again with 
him in his mouth. This was done in less than a quarter of a 
minute ; we all saw it, and yet the servants had not time to draw 
their pistols or do anything to save the dog.' 

2 In a letter from Glamis Castle (1765), Mr. Gray refers to 
his ascent of the Pass of Killiecrankie in Perthshire in these 
terms : — ' Vestibulum ante ipsiim primisque hi faucibus Orci stands 
the solitary mansion of Mr. Robertson of Fascally; close by it 
rises a hill covered with oak, with grotesque masses of rock staring 
from among their trunks, like the sullen countenances of Fingal 
and his family frowning on the little mortals of modern days : 



CHAP. IX.] EPISTOLARY WRITING, 23 1 

Superior to all his contemporaries as a ' letter- Letters of 
writer ' or correspondent, stands Horace Walpole. Waipoie. 
His facile conversational style of writing and natural 
arrangement of topics are not more remarkable than 
his pleasant way of relating news of all kinds, whether 
political, artistical or literary, incidents of life and 
manners, travelling anecdotes, bon mots or fashion- 
able scandal.^ Not unfrequently his sentiments and 
views give an impression of affectation and inconsis- 
tency ; but Walpole's affectation was a second nature, 
and is at least entertaining. A vein of light satire 
runs through most of his letters, for which perhaps 
he might plead the excuse of the Roman satirist, 
that it was difficult to avoid writing satire, consider- 
ing the subjects he wrote upon. 

Looking to the published letters of a century 
back from the present time, the examples of this 
lighter species of composition are numerous, but of 
very unequal merit. To refer only to a few of these. And of 
the correspondence of Richardson the novelist has persons. 
been edited by Mrs. Barbauld, that of David Hume 
by Mr. J. H. Burton, and of Mr. Burke by Earl 
Fitzwilliam and Sir R. Bourke. The letters of 
Cowper have been given in his Life by Hayley, and 

from between this hill and the adjacent mountains, pent in a 
narrow channel, comes roaring out the river Tummel, and falls 
headlong down, involved in w^hite foam, which rises into a mist 
all round it. . . . In short, since I saw the Alps I have seen 
nothing sublime till now.' 

1 Mr. Walpole's letters to his various correspondents extend 
over a period of sixty years from 1735. They have been recently 
arranged chronologically and edited, with notes, in nine volumes, 
by Mr. Peter Cunningham. 



232 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

more fully in the edition of his works by Mr. 
Southey ; those of Burns are included in Currie's 
edition of his works. The diary and letters of 
Madame D'Arblay (Miss Burney) have been edited 
by her niece. A posthumous volume of letters 
from the continent, of contemporary interest, by the 
first Earl of Dudley to the Bishop of Llandaff, ap- 
peared in 1840. 

Of late years it has been a frequent practice to 
incorporate an author s letters, when deemed worthy 
of publication, in a memoir of his life, as in Moore's 
' Life of Lord Byron,' Lockhart's * Life of Sir 
Walter Scott,' and Earl Russell's ' Memoirs and 
Correspondence of Mr. Moore.' Without going the 
length of the opinion of Lord Hardwicke,^ ' that no 
works have done more service to mankind than those 
which have appeared in the shape of letters upon 
familiar subjects, and which perhaps were never 
intended to be published,' recourse may very well be 
had to these and other epistolary works for much 
entertaining and more or less instructive reading. 



II. VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. 

Books of Voyages and Travels written by natives 
of Britain are of course entitled to some place in 
Literary literature, but it is difficult to say exactly what place 
of ^books they should take. If veracity be a leading quality of 
such books, the less invention and imagination they 
have the better*. If the author's route or journey be 
the guiding thread of his discourse, arrangement of 

^ In the case of Pope v. Curl, June 1741, Atkyn's Reports. 



of travels. 



CHAP. IX.] VO YA GES A XD TRA VELS. 233 

subject is provided for. His selection of facts and 
things observed may indeed show greater or less 
judgment ; his propriety of thought and sentiment in 
commenting upon what he has seen may be greater 
or less ; the style and diction of his narrative may 
be more or less perspicuous and pure. 

Assuming then a bo7id fide book of travels to be a 
literary work, it would seem that, to give it a good 
standing as such, the facts narrated ought to be of 
sufficient novelty and importance to justify the 
traveller appearing before the public in print ; the 
comments on the facts observed should be sue- 
gestive, the reflections just, and the language of 
the narrative unaffected and clear.^ The vovaees 
and travels that have taken most hold of the national 
mind and have kept in after years their position as 
standard books, possessing an interest of their own, 
may probably be found to possess the qualities now 
mentioned in a greater or less degree. 

Among the most noteworthy books of travel In 
the beginning of the i8th centur}^ is that of ]\Ir. 
Addison, entitled ' Remarks on several Parts of 
Italy and Switzerland in the Years 1701, 1702, 1703.' 
As the production of a scholar and man of refined 
taste these travels possess a certain value, but are 
more remarkable for their erudition and quotations 
from the Roman poets with reference to classical 

1 The works to be mentioned in this brief notice are intended 
to be Voyages and Travels, properly so called ; that is, registers 
or journals of the tour or voyage, and of the traveller's proceed- 
ings, or adventures, if he have any, and not mere accounts or de- 
scriptions of the result of his obsen-ations. 



2 34 



V/£:iV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book i. 



Summary 
of certain 
books of 
voyages 
and 
travels. 

1768-72. 

1773- 

1777- 
1776-78. 

1787-89. 



1778. 

1805-8, 

1 8 10. 

1810-23. 

1809-10. 

1841. 



localities than for observation of life and manners, 
such as might have been looked for from the author 
of the 'Spectator.'^ The Voyages and Travels in 
the following summary possess more of human 
interest as well as much valuable information on a 
variety of subjects. Such are — 

{In Europe) Pennant's * First and Second Tours 
in Scotland ; ' Dr, Johnson s * Journey to the Western 
Islands ; ' Bray's * Tour in Derbyshire and York- 
shire ; ' Arthur Young's * Tour in Ireland,' which, 
according to Miss Edgeworth, was the first faithful 
portrait of the inhabitants of Ireland ; ^ the same 
author's ' Tour in France,' the observations in which 
are directed principally to the state of agriculture, 
but are of interest as to the state of France at the 
commencement of the Revolution; Archdeacon 
Coxe's ' Travels in Switzerland and in the Northern 
Countries of Europe ; ' Sir Robert Ker Porter's 
' Travelling Sketches in Russia and Sweden ; ' Sir 
George Stewart Mackenzie's ' Travels in Iceland ; ' 
Dr. Edward Clarke's ' Travels ' in various countries, 
combining instruction and amusement in an eminent 
degree ; Journey of Sir John C. Hobhouse (Lord 
Broughton) through Albania and other provinces 
of Turkey ; Colonel Mure's * Journal of a Tour in 
Greece and the Ionian Islands ; ' the Hon. Mr. 
Curzon's ' Visit to the Monasteries of the Levant.' 



1 As regards art, Mr. Addison shows himself in this book more 
conversant with the statuary of the ancients than with the paint- 
ing and sculpture of modern Italy ; and in architecture he sees 
apparently nothing worthy of remark at Venice, though he ad- 
mires the palazzos of Florence and the renaissance buildings of 
Rome. 2 Castle Rackrent^ ad finem. 



CHAP. IX.] VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. 235 

(In Asia) Captain Daniel Beeckman's * Voyage 1713- 
to the Island of Borneo ; ' John Bell of Antermony's 

* Travels from St. Petersburg to divers parts of Asia, 17 15. 
including China and Pekin ; ' * A Voyage Round the 
World/ by George Anson, Esq., Commander-in- 1740-44- 
chief of a squadron of his Majesty's ships sent 

upon an expedition to the South Seas, compiled 

from his papers and materials by Richard Walter, 

chaplain to the expedition, — a ' tale of the sea ' in 

real life, combining in a narrative of much interest 

the incidents of a voyage of discovery and of a raid 

against the Spanish merchantmen ; Three Voyages 

to the Pacific Ocean and Australasia, by Captain 1768-80. 

James Cook, the intrepid successor of the Dampiers 

and navigators of a previous age ; Captain W. 

Francklin's ' Tour from Bengal to Persia ; ' Syme's 1786. 

* Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava ; ' Sir George 1795. 
Staunton's ' Notes and Proceedings during the 1816. 
British Embassy to Pekin ; ' Sir Alexander Burnes' 

' Travels into Bokhara, being a journey from India 1834. 
to Cabool, Tartary, and Persia;' and the same 
author's * Personal Narrative of a Journey to and 1836-8. 
residence In the city of Cabool.' The * Crescent and 1845 
the Cross ' of Eliot Warburton and Mr. Kinglake's 
' Eothen' are agreeably written travels in the Asiatic 
provinces of Turkey. 

{In Africa) WIndhus's * Journey to Mequinez,' 
the residence of the Emperor of Morocco, on the 
occasion of Commodore Stewart's embassy thither 172 1. 
for the redemption of the British captives ; Dr. 
Thomas Shaw's * Travels in Barbary and the 
Levant,' esteemed for accuracy of observation and 1736. 



236 VIEJV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book I. 

1768-73. their illustration of scripture and the classic authors ; 

Bruce's * Travels in Abyssinia to discover the source 

1792-8. of the Nile ; ' W. G. Brown's * Travels in Africa, 

Egypt and Syria ; ' Mungo Park's * First and Second 

1796- Travels in Africa,' written in a lucid and simple 

^^°^' style ; Denham and Clapperton's ' Narratives of 
1822-24. Travels and Discoveries in northern and central 

jg Africa;' Richard and John Lander's 'Journal of an 
expedition to explore the course and termination of 
the Niger;' and Captain John Manning Speke's 

1863. ' Journal of the discovery of the source of the Nile 
in the Lake Victoria- Nyanza,' — a discovery which 
has solved the problem of many preceding ages. Of 
the travels in Africa of Dr. Livingstone and of Sir 
Samuel Baker, the hope may be expressed that they 
are not yet concluded. 

1735. (-^^ America) Ulloa's ' Voyage to South America,* 

translated from the Spanish with observations by 
John Adams ; Dr. Barnaby's ' Travels in North 
1759-60. America' during the period immediately preceding 
the American war; Captain Basil Hall's 'Journal 
written on the coasts of Chili, Peru and Mexico ; ' 
his ' Voyage to Loo Choo, and other Fragments of 
Voyages and Travels,' all sufficiently entertaining. 
The narratives of the various expeditions conducted 
by Parry, Franklin and other navigators, with the 
intent (vain for any practical purpose) of discovering 
in the Polar Seas and along their inhospitable shores 
a north-west passage between the two continents, 
are full of curious and often painful interest. 



1620-22. 



BOOK II. 



ARCHITECTURE. 



CHAP. I.] CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE. 239 



CHAPTER I. 

BRITISH ARCHITECTURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

Pailadian-classical architecture — Architecture and land- 
scape gardening — Variations of classical architecture — • 
Greek — Italian — Street architecture. 

At the period of the accession of the House of Han- 
over the adoption of the ItaHan or Palladian style 
for new buildings of an architectural character may 
be regarded as having been the general rule in Eng- 
land. Sir Christopher Wren's designs for churches 
in the metropolis and other buildings were gradually 
being carried into execution ; some of them, after 
his own decease, being executed by his pupil 
Nicholas Hawksmoor. This architect built also 
from his own designs, but cannot be said to have 
improved upon the practice of his master. 

Sir John Vanbrugh, who had more originality Sirj. 
than Hawksmoor and greater genius, attempted a brugh. 
variation in the Palladian style, without much sue- 17^26. 
cess as regards any permanent influence on English 
building of the period. His name is usually asso- 
ciated with his two principal works, Blenheim and 
Castle Howard ; both of them displaying his pecu- 
liar manner, which looked to grandeur and pic- 
turesque effect rather than to regularity of style. 
While ridiculed by Pope and Horace Walpole for 



240 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART [book ir. 

heaviness and want of grace in his designs, Vanbr ugh 
has been extolled by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir 
Uvedale Price for a certain pictorial excellence in 
his architecture.^ His peculiar merit in this respect 
is analysed by Sir Joshua into an understanding of 
light and shadow and great skill in composition. 
Vanbrugh's cupolas and towers (if towers they are) 
not only group well together, but give a rich variety 
of outline against the sky, the want of which is fre- 
quently felt in classical buildings. 

The architectural performances of James Gibbs, 
Colin Campbell, and William Kent had the ques- 
tionable merit of materially aiding to imprint on 
British architecture of the 1 8th century its Palladian- 
J. Gibbs. classical character. Of these architects Gibbs may 
be regarded as the best, his reputation resting prin- 
cipally on the Radcliffe library at Oxford and the 
church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, London, with 
its fine octostyle portico. Campbell, author of the 
^ Vitruvius Britannicus ' (containing his own designs), 
was professedly a follower of Inigo Jones ; but going 
farther than Jones in his admiration of porticoes.^ 
A porticoed house became the general, though not 
universal type, of an English mansion ; several varia- 
tions being in course of time introduced upon it. 
Combinations of arches with columnar ordinances, 
broken entablatures, attached columns and pilaster 
fronts, came into vogue as justified by Palladian pre- 
cedents. Better features of the Italian style, when 

^ Reynolds' 13th Discourse) Price on the Picturesque^ vol. ii. 
p. 212. 

2 Fergusson's Modern Styles of Architecture (1862), p. 286. 



Died 
1754- 



CHAP. I.] CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE. 24 1 

well applied, were the cupola and the unbroken 
crowning cornice along the roof. 

William Kent, designer and architect as well as The Earl 
landscape gardener, was regarded in his day as a Hno-ton 
profound authority in all matters of taste, from ^J!^,. 
an arcade or a ceiling to the design of a lady's Kent, 
gown. His success in the world appears to have 
considerably exceeded his desert ; but whether this 
was owing to bold pretensions or to the defective 
taste of the day, or to the influence of his patron the 
Earl of Burlington, it would be difficult to say. His 
connection with Lord Burlington was fortunate for 
him, in so far as his lordship's taste in architecture 
being better than his own, Mr. Kent occasionally got 
the credit of designs in which the peer had the prin- 
cipal part. The front and colonnade of Burlington 
House in Piccadilly and the northern or park-front 
of the Treasury buildings at Whitehall and the 
Horse Guards are the chief structures associated Died 
with the name of Kent. ^'^^ ' 

This architect had in some way incurred the high 
displeasure of Hogarth the painter, and is introduced 
along with the Earl of Burlington in two of Hogarth's 
satirical prints, both of which, although of different 
years, have the feature in common of a view of 
'Burlington Gate' or front of Burlington House. 
Kent is drawn in both prints perched on the summit 
of the pediment, while Michael Angelo and Raphael, 
placed below on each extremity of the pediment, 
regard him with amazement. In one of the prints 
Lord Burlington and Mr. Pope are engaged in 
whitewashing the front of Burlington House. 



242 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book li. 

During the latter half of the i8th century Sir 
William Chambers, Sir Robert Taylor, Robert and 
James Adam, were the architects whose works were 
in the highest repute. George Dance, the second of 
that name who held the office of city architect, had 
the merit (although not a first-class architect) of con- 
Newgate, structing Newgate prison — a building of massive 
^'^'^^' and simple character, with a fa9ade showing some- 
thing of the early Florentine manner, and satisfying 
the taste from its appearance of perfect appropriate- 
ness to its object. The Mansion-house of London 
was also the work of Dance. Sir William Chambers 
Somerset was the architect of Somerset House, which, not- 
withstanding all the criticism it has undergone, is a 
great example of the Italian style and the chief 
architectural work of the reign of George 1 11.^ The 
Strand front is considered the best, though its effect 
is marred by the narrowness of the street. The 
southern interior of the quadrangle is too much 
broken into parts, so as to deprive it of that massive 
grandeur of effect its size should warrant. The 
river-front, though liable to observation on the same 
ground, shows a fine extent of ornamental building. 
Edifices Among edifices in the Palladian style the works 

J. Adam, of Robert and James Adam take a fair position. 
Their father William Adam, a Scotchman, built 
Hopetoun House in Linlithgowshire. Robert and 
James are known in England by the Adelphi Terrace 

^ Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose excellent portrait of Chambers 
is in the possession of the Royal Academy, calls Somerset House 
' an illustrious specimen of the architect's abilities.' — loth Discourse. 
Sir W. Chambers died in 1796. 



CHAP. I.] CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE. 243 

buildings (one of the first approaches to improve- 
ment in the street architecture of London), and by 
the screen of the Admiralty ; also by Keddlestone 
Hall, Derbyshire, Caenwood in Middlesex, and other 
houses. They also built the Register House in 
Edinburgh. The latest work in the preparation of Died 
designs for which the Adams were engaged was the 
College of Edinburgh. Of their designs the only 
part ultimately adopted was the present street front 
of Roman Doric (omitting the central cupola pro- 
posed by them) and the Ionic colonnades in the 
corners of the quadrangle. This building, including 
a library hall of great architectural beauty, was after- 
wards completed in the Italian style by William 
Playfair, a Scottish architect.^ 

From the designs of these and other architects Pailadian 

. . .. architec- 

numerous mansion-houses m the Italian manner ture in 
were erected before the close of the 1 8th century in ^^ ^^ 
all parts of the United Kingdom. A considerable 
proportion of these houses had columnar porticoes, 
while combinations frequently appeared of the arch 
and column in fronts.^ In many instances, whether 

* Life and Works of W. LL. Playfair, by J. M. Graham, 
in Transactims of Scottish Architectural Lnstitiite, i860. 

^ The pubHcation in numbers of the Vietvs of Country Seats iii 
England, Wales, Scotland, and Lreland, by John Preston Neale, 
commenced in 18 18. Taking the views in this book of the 
mansion-houses in the county of York alone, there were at that 
date twenty-three houses in the Pailadian or ItaHan style, of which 
thirteen have porticoes ; twelve houses in the style of Elizabeth 
and James, having more or less of Italian detail; and three 
modern Gothic. This summary may not be quite accurate, as 
from the small scale of Neale's views the style of architecture is 
in some houses not very distinctly seen. 

R 2 



244 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book II. 

from following too much the same models or from 
the edifices being unsuited to the scenery and cli- 
mate of this country, the result architecturally is 
believed to have been the reverse of satisfactory ; 
and some may think Pope's vaticination, conveyed 
in the following lines/ has been fulfilled in regard to 
much of the i8th century building in England : — 

You show us Rome was glorious, not profuse, 
And pompous buildings once were things of use. 
Yet shall, my lord, your just, your noble rules 
Fill half the land with imitating fools ; 
Who random drawings from your sheets shall take, 
And of one beauty many blunders make ; 
Load some vain church with old theatric state. 
Turn arcs of triumph to a garden gate; . . . 
Shall call the winds through long arcades to roar, 
Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door; 
Conscious they act a true Palladian part. 
And if they starve, they starve by rules of art. 

Treat- Simultaneously with the adoption in England of 

^round^ the Palladian instead of the old English or Eliza- 
adjommg bethan style of architecture for mansions and 

the -^ 

mansion country-houses, a change took place likewise in the 

treatment of the immediately adjoining ground. 
Along with other foreign features introduced in the 
reigns of Elizabeth and James L, a taste for Italian 
gardening as an adjunct of the house had been 
widely extended. The gardens were enriched with 
architectural embellishment, and as art enlarged its 
range, ornaments in fountains and basins were suc- 
cessively added ; grass terraces connected hy flights 

^ Epistle to the Earl of BiLrlington. 



changed. 



CHAP. I.] CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE. 245 

of Steps were decorated with balustrades, vases and 
statues. Slopes of velvet turf, parterres of flowers 
bordered with stone ledges, bowling-greens and 
shady alleys of yews and limes, gave variety to the 
scene. In the reign of William III. the Dutch taste 
in gardening, more minutely formal, was partially 
superinduced upon the Italian or the later Italian- 
French manner of Charles II. ; and the pleasure- 
ground was cut into straight little walks, fraternal 
alleys with curious bowers, quincunxes and other 
figures intersected by hedges of holly, yew, horn- 
beam and beech clipped into fantastic shapes.^ Of 
these two kinds of garden the Italian, with its archi- 
tectural features and larger manner, was the more 
important in an architectural point of view. Both 
were destined to be sacrificed to what was called 
a more natural or park-like treatment of the ground. 

As if to compensate for the introduction into ^^^^^ 

^ ^ ^ ^ scape 

England of Palladian mansions, fashion decreed that garden- 
the ground about a house should be gardened into i8th 
a so-called natural and English landscape. Grass ^^^ ^^^' 
lawns and trees were brought up to the very door 
and windows. Belts and clumps of planting, arti- 
ficial water, undulating ground, became the watch- 
words and substantial signs of the new mode of 

^ Walpole O71 Modeini Gardening {Anecdotes of Painting in 
England^ vol. i\''.) ; Essays on the Picturesque^ by Sir Uvedale 
Price. A letter of Mr. Pope to Martha Blount (17 14) contains 
a particular description of the old garden and house, as then ex- 
isting, of Sherborne Castle in Dorsetshire. At the country-seat 
of Levens, near Kendal, a handsome garden in the old taste 
still remains, terraced and with trees and hedges clipped into 
shapes. 



246 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK II. 

' improving,' which was in vogue during a consider- 
able part of last century, and spread into all corners 
of the kingdom. Kent, Lancelot Brown, and Repton 
were successively the chief apostles and teachers of 
this method of landscape gardening, which had some 
good but more ill features.^ It is thus pleasantly 
described by Cowper in ' The Task : ' — 

Improvement, too, the idol of the age,^ 

Is fed with many a victim. Lo, he comes ! 

The omnipotent magician. Brown, appears ! 

Down falls the venerable pile, the abode 

Of our forefathers, a grave whisker'd race. 

Yet tasteless. Springs a palace in its stead, 

But in a distant spot where, more exposed. 

It may enjoy th' advantage of the north 

And aguish east, till time shall have transform'd 

Those naked acres to a sheltering grove. 

He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn, 

Woods vanish, hills subside and valleys rise, 

And streams, as if created for his use. 



* The grounds of Stowe were laid out by the first Lord Cob- 
ham when regularity was in fashion. It appears, from Bray's 
Tour in Derbyshire m. 1777, that after they had been 'improved' 
according to the landscape-gardening of Kent and Brown, 'the 
original boundary was still preserved on account of its magnifi- 
cence ; for round the whole circuit of between five and six miles 
is carried a broad gravel walk, planted with rows of trees, and open 
either to the park or the country. ... In the interior scenes 
of the garden, few traces of regularity appear ; where it yet 
remains in the plantations in any degree, it is at least disguised ; 
a basin which was an octagon is converted into an irregular 
piece of water falling down a cascade into a lake below.' 

^ ' Our aunt's bell rings,' says Miss Neville in She Stoops to 
Conquer, 'for our afternoon's walk round the improvements.' — 
Act I. 



CHAP. I. CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE. 247 

Pursue the track of his directing wand, 
Sinuous or straight, now rapid and now slow. 
Now murmuring soft, now roaring in cascades. 
Even as he bids ! The enraptured owner smiles ; 
'Tis finish'd. And yet, finish'd as it seems, 
Still wants a grace, the loveliest it could show — 
A mine to satisfy the enormous cost. 

So deeply imbued wefe the English builders of Recur- 
the 1 8th century with the conventional canons and [^e^pure 
manner of Palladio, Bernini, and the architecture of Greek 

archi- 

their school, that a long time elapsed before it oc- tecture. 
curred to anyone to look beyond it and examine 
the original examples of the classical style. The 
British public had acquired a knowledge of Roman 
architecture through the Palladlan version. Of the 
pure classical architecture of Greece they were almost 
entirely ignorant. Even Sir William Chambers, in his 
' Treatise on Civil Architecture ' (for half a century 
the only systematic book on the subject), when he 
comes to speak of the Greek style, shows how 
defective was his acquaintance with It, depreciating 
and underrating the Greek in comparison with the 
Italian style.^ As regards Roman architecture, the 
publications of Dawkins and Wood illustrating 
Palmyra and Balbec,^ and Robert Adam's en- 1764. 
graved drawings of the palace of Diocletian 
at Spalatro, excited considerable interest, but they 
do not seem , to have had much effect on the pre- 
vailing style of building. The Greek architecture 

1 P. 116, edition by Gwilt, 1825. The first edition of Cham- 
bers' Treatise -wd^s published in 1759. 

2 London, 1753 ^-nd 1757. 



248 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book ii. 

became first practically known in this country through 
the publications of James Stuart and Nicholas 
Revett.^ 

The full effect of these publications and of the 
enquiry into and study of the subject they occa- 
sioned did not appear till the commencement of the 
present century. About that time, a strong feeling 
arose to get quit if possible of the trammels of the 
Palladian school, and to have recourse to the models 
of classical architecture at its fountain-head. This 
however it was easier to propose than to put in 
execution. The monuments of Grecian art were 
mostly temples ; in other words, buildings adapted 
to a southern climate and to the purposes of pagan 
worship. To make a direct copy or reproduction of 
those ancient structures, although tried in one or 
two instances, was well-nigh impossible, and in- 
advisable if it had been possible. The next thing 
to endeavour was to master and get at the principle 
and spirit of the Greek style, and apply it to modern 
buildings and the requirements of modern life. This 
was the very difficulty, with a change of circumstances, 
which the Italian builders had to encounter in their 
adaptation of the Roman style to modern uses, and 
which they might be said to have by degrees in 
some measure overcome, however opinions might 
differ as to the satisfactory character of the results. 

* These two architects and draughtsmen having visited Greece, 
and particularly Athens, brought back with them a series of accu- 
rate drawings and measurements of the ancient monuments of 
Athens, which, with the aid of the Dilettanti Society, were en- 
graved and pubhshed in successive volumes in 1761, 1787, 1794. 



CHAP. L] CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE, 249 

It will, it is believed, be generally acknowledged, its diffi- 
that the adoption of a more strictly classical style of ^ ^ ' 
building, having reference to the models of pure 
Grecian art, has been accomplished (in most in- 
stances) with very doubtful success. When a feeling 
is shown for harmony, proportion and general fitness, 
and common sense is displayed in the application 
of the Greek style, the result may be satisfactory. 
But when a disproportioned Doric or Ionic portico is 
made to front a misshapen mass of building, when 
Choragic monuments or Lanterns are perched on the 
top of peripteral Exchange-rooms, and steeples, made 
up (very characteristically in the climate of Britain) 
of Towers of the Winds, rise from what is called a 
Grecian but is really a nondescript temple or church, 
such pseudo-classical attempts can be regarded only 
with regret. 

The Greek style was equally difficult and intract- 
able in ecclesiastical and in civil edifices. In the 
churches where it has been tried, the building cost of 
which was limited, the result has usually been a 
chaste but meagre plainness, with incongruit}^ exter- 
nally and inconvenience within. Comparatively few 
churches, therefore, have been erected in the pure 
classical style. Of the civil edifices in this style the 
Bank of England is an example in everyone's view. 
The peculiarity of the site and the fall of the ground 
presented difficulties which the architect. Sir John 
Soane, is not thought to have entirely got over ; 
but a great effect is produced by several of its archi- 
tectural features. The British Museum by Sir 
Robert Smirke, Grange House in Hampshire by 



2 so 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book IT. 



Greek 
architec- 
ture in 
Scotland. 



Wilkins, as well as some other columnar edifices, are 
regarded as not altogether successful examples of the 
temple architecture of Greece. The wind roars 
through long colonnades quite as much as through 
long arcades, and a cold may be caught at a Doric 
or Ionic door quite as well as at a Venetian door.^ 

Scotland did not escape the cX^ssicdl ficrore of the 
early part of the present century. The merchants 
of Glasgow erected an Exchange-room in the form 
of a peripteral Grecian temple, and on the Calton 
hill of Edinburgh there sprang up four elegant little 
monuments in the Greek style, besides twelve Doric 
columns of a portico for the intended Parthenon of 
' Modern Athens.' The High School on the south 
slope of this hill, designed by Thomas Hamilton, is 
well set down, and is one of the best modern speci- 
mens of the adaptation of the style to a useful 



^ In the internal arrangements of the British Museum very- 
extensive accommodation has been provided, not only for the 
valuable sculpture and other contents of the museum, but for the 
vast collection of books and manuscripts of which the library 
consists. In 1855 the Dome reading-room was built within the 
quadrangle upon an area of 48,000 superficial feet ; the plan of 
it, originally suggested by Mr. Panizzi, librarian of the Museum, 
having been carried into execution by Mr. Sidney Smirke. The 
room is circular, causing some difficulty (as in all round rooms) in 
becoming acquainted with its localities ; having tables and pas- 
sages exactly similar converging towards the centre space. The 
Museum reading-room may be compared in form to the upper 
portioii of the Pantheon at Rome, the diameter of its dome, 140 
feet, being only two feet less than that of the Pantheon. The 
building is constructed principally of iron, with brick arches be- 
tween the main ribs, supported by twenty iron piers, and is lighted 
from the roof and by side windows at a considerable height from 
the floor ; the glazing, ventilation, and heating being very artisti- 
cally provided for. 



CHAR I.] CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE. 25 1 

building. Mr. Playfair, whom we have seen taking 
up the designs of Robert and James Adam, built 
for the Trustees of Scottish manufactures, assisted by 
the government, two classical structures In Edin- 
burgh upon a moderate scale and sufficiently well 
adapted to their purpose. One of these, the Royal 
Institution, Is on the general plan of an octo-style 
perlstylar temple of Grecian Doric, having an ex- 
hibition gallery In the centre lighted from the roof, 
with suites of rooms at the sides. Its effect Is much 
injured by the nature of the site, from which the 
ground rises on two sides. The other is the build- 
ing appropriated to the Scottish National Gallery 
and Royal Scottish Academy, of Greek Ionic; an 
oblong building with a square central mass, having 
porticoes at each side and at the ends. It contains 
two long suites of rooms lighted from the roof. 

Of British examples of Grecian art St. George's St. 
Hall, Liverpool, designed by Harvey L. Elmes, Is HaJl^^^ 
perhaps the most successful, looking to its design 
externally and internally and to the purity of its 
ornament and detail. Built in accordance with the 
principles of Greek architecture, it displays at the 
same time a certain originality in their application. 
It is Indeed the only British building in tHe classical 
style which can be named along witfi' the church 
of the Magdalene at Paris. 

In almost all building in the stricter classical 
style the defect or at least the inferiority of our 
sculptural decoration causes a line of demarcation 
between ancient and modern Greek architecture 
which has not as yet, and is not likely to be, got 



252 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book II. 

over. Without sculptural ornament Greek forms 
and details, when applied in modern buildings, 
though they may be chaste and correct, are apt to 
run into plainness and monotony, of which instances 
are to be seen constantly. There is moreover in 
the pure Greek style a haughty simplicity (to use 
an expression of Mr. Ruskin's) which demands 
certain conditions in regard to scale, situation and 
other things, to render it pleasing. Being restricted 
to the ground floor, or, if a disproportionate dimension 
of column is employed, to the ground and first floors, 
a Greek building of considerable size also requires 
more horizontal space than often can be afforded. 
The It is not, therefore, very surprising, taking these 

stii/a various considerations into view, that notwithstand- 
useful J ^^ lofty pretensions of the Greek to be the 

popular i=> J r 

style. true classical style, the Italian in its various modifi- 
cations should yet have kept its position as a useful 
popular style. Not disdaining that ornament, more 
rich than pure, which it brings from the Palazzos of 
Genoa, Rome, and Venice, now part and parcel of 
the style, it is more agreeable and striking to the 
general eye. And looking to its numerous combi- 
nations of the arch and column, or its ornamental 
facades without those combinations, and to its power 
of rising to * a height of several stories and thus 
allowing more internal accommodation in a given 
space of ground, it is also better suited than the 
Greek to modern living and requirements. Of late 
years we have seen various new examples of the 
Italian style in mansions of the nobility and gentry 
and in public buildings and club-houses, showing 



CHAP. L] CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE. 253 

Upon the whole an improvement on the examples of 
the same style In the last century, and affording 
evidence of more enlarged views and a better study 
of architecture. The park front of Bridgewater 
house, London, by Sir Charles Barry, is regarded as 
one of the best of the recent facades ; the propor- 
tions good, the windows, including dormers, well set 
and grouped, the balustrades, cornices, and chimneys 
tastefully managed — and no portico. 

The picturesque irregularity of the old streets Street 
and gable-fronted houses of English towns, with tecture. 
their high-pitched and occasionally thatched roofs, 
having succumbed to the natural causes of decay 
and the progressive enlargement of the towns, the 
modern street architecture that succeeded was, 
generally speaking, during the i8th century, very 
plain and tiresomely monotonous. In illustration of 
this, reference need only be made to Baker Street, 
Gower Street, and Gloucester Place, in London, and 
to the streets or ' divisions ' of the new town of . 
Edinburgh as originally built. The street architec- 
ture of the town of Bath was of a more elegant and 
pretentious character. There was at Bath ready 
access to good freestone quarries in the neighbour- 
hood, and its commanding situation upon the slope 
of a hill aided in giving effect to the new buildings 
that arose about the middle of the i8th century in 
that fashionable watering place. ^ 

^ ' I was impatient,' writes Mr. Matthew Bramble, in Smollett's 
Humphrey Clinker {\']'^\), 'to see the boasted improvements in 
architecture for which the upper parts of the town have been so 
much celebrated, and t'other day I made a circuit of all the new 



2 54 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book li. 

Street architecture is of late years considerably 
improved, though still in many respects defective. 
When this improvement commenced, the classical 
style, as that most in vogue and supposed to be the 
most manageable, was usually adopted. By group- 
ing parcels of houses and sides of squares, and by 
a free use of central porticoes, engaged or other- 
wise, pilasters, lines of balustrades, vases and 
sphinxes, architects such as Holland and Nash in 
London and Playfair in Edinburgh have en- 
deavoured to do away and break the monotony of 
modern streets and squares. In the principal 
squares of Edinburgh, and in the terraces (by 
Playfair) on the Calton hill, this more varied and 
ornamental treatment is seen to as much advantage 
though on a less scale than in London, from the 

buildings. The square, though irregular, is on the whole pretty 
well laid out, spacious, open and airy, and in my opinion by far 
the most wholesome and agreeable situation in Bath, especially 
the upper side of it ; but the avenues to it are mean, dirty, dan- 
gerous, and indirect. . . . The Circus is a pretty bauble, contrived 
for show, and looks like Vespasian's amphitheatre turned outside 
in. If we consider it in point of magnificence, the great number 
of small doors belonging to the separate houses, the inconsider- 
able height of the different orders, the affected ornaments of 
the architrave, which are both childish and misplaced, and the 
areas projecting into the street, surrounded with iron rails, destroy 
a good part of its effect upon the eye ; and perhaps we shall find 
it still more defective if we view it in the light of convenience. 
The figure of each separate dwelling-house, being the segment of 
a circle, must spoil the symmetry of the rooms by contracting 
them towards the street windows and leaving a large sweep in the 
space behind. . . The same artist who planned the Circus has 
hkewise projected a Crescent. When that is finished, we shall 
probably have a Star, and those who are living thirty years hence 
may perhaps see all the signs of the Zodiac exhibited at Bath.' 



CHAP. I.] CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE. 255 

excellent quality of the Edinburgh freestone and, in 
the case of the terraces just mentioned, their pecu- 
liarly fine situation. In more recent London archi- 
tecture, in the building of large hotels, palazzo club- 
houses, banks, and public offices, the advantage in a 
picturesque point of view of giving a varied line by 
breaks in the outline, pavilion-towers, and ornamental 
chimneys, has been recognised and acted upon with 
greater or less success ; classical architects taking a 
hint in this particular from the Gothic style and 
from Vanbrugh's manner. The National Gallery in 
Trafalgar Square (by Wilkins), of common-place 
renaissance architecture, with one of the finest sites 
in the world, is much injured in point of effect by its 
insignificant cupola. The London University build- 
ing recently erected behind Burlington House from 
the design of Sir James Pennethorne is an elegant 
and well-proportioned composition in the Italian 
style, enriched with statuary ornament. 

In the modern and most showy parts of London Superior ^ 
the plasterer's skill is too much had recourse to, the work and 
use of stucco being" apparently regarded as a neces- ^^^^^ 

^ ^^ •' ^ cotta, or 

sary expedient where, in the absence of hewn stone, stucco 
an ornamental exterior is to be provided at a mo- paint? 
derate expense.^ That this is a crying evil, not 
only architecturally, but from the circumstance of 
stucco, plaster and paint requiring constant attention 

1 The era of stucco and plaster seems to have commenced in 
London in the latter portion of the i8th century. Mr. Puff, in 
the Cridc (1779), is spoken of as preparing a paragraph adver- 
tisement for the newspapers, from ' A detester of visible brick- 
work, in favour of the new invented stucco.' 



256 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK ii. 

in order to preserve them from the effects of hu- 
midity, will be evident to anyone who remarks the 
columnar porches and other parts of houses fronting 
the east in many parts of Belgravia and the western 
suburbs of London. Such a use or rather abuse of 
stucco in the external coating of houses is a great 
argument in favour of the growing taste for houses 
built of superior brick- work with stone quoins. In 
brick houses of this kind, having terra cotta fronts 
and mouldings, there is great scope for originality 
of treatment in a solid material and at moderate ex- 
pense. Variety of colour also in the bricks and terra 
cotta, not applied to excess, may be used to enhance 
the ornamental effect. The chief risk in the use of 
terra cotta frontage ornaments arises from the 
shrinking of the material, and hence the advantage 
of a pure body of good clay over mixed material, 
as producing a greater uniformity of shrinking, is 
understood to be recognised in practice. For dura- 
bility and beauty of line good freestone will gene- 
rally be preferred ; but terra cotta work gives a 
fineness of surface and a variety of colouring, where 
that is wanted, not easily to be obtained in any 
other material.^ 

^ Had engineering architecture, including bridges, aqueducts, 
lighthouses, railway- stations, &c., come within the scope of this 
historical survey, the works of the Messrs. Rennie, Telford, Rendel, 
Brunei, Cubitt, and G. and R. Stephenson would undoubtedly 
have claimed attention. Of late years the desire to make this 
species of architecture ornamental and tasteful, as well as solid 
and useful, has been generally manifested, and in some instances 
carried into effect. 



CHAP. II.] GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. . 257 



CHAPTER II. 

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND ITS VARIETIES. 

Gothic Architecture — Its revival and use in ecclesiastical 
edifices — Question of its application to secular buildings 
— Sir C. Barry and the Houses of Parliament — Tudor 
Gothic — Varieties, 

Having traced the progress of the classical style of 
architecture In its Italian variations and in the 
severer Greek style ; having remarked the Impetus 
given to it originally by the genius of Jones and 
Wren, the mannerism and imitation that followed, 
and the revolt for a time of public taste in favour of 
the more genuine classicism of Greece, it remains now 
to advert to another phase in the history of British 
architecture. About the same time that the pure 
Greek style was asserting its claim to attention In 
contra-distlnction to the ornate and mannered Italian, 
a powerful rival to both these forms of classicism 
appeared In what has been called the Gothic 
Revival. 

Notwithstanding the existence In all parts of the Gothic 
United Kingdom of many admirable monuments of lecture 
Gothic building, that style had waned (as we have ^^J^^din 
seen) before the Influence of the Italian renaissance. England. 
Men of cultivated taste, of theory and of practice, 
the Wrens and Evelyns and Grays of their day, 

s 



258 y/ElV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK II. 

united in depreciating it. The cathedrals and 
minsters were looked upon as wonderful productions 
of a barbarous age, which nobody could understand. 
Mr. Evelyn in his ' Account of Architects and 
Architecture,' written in the reign of King William 
and dedicated to Sir Christopher Wren, speaks of 
them as ' congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy, 
monkish piles, without any just proportion, use or 
beauty, compared with the truly ancient' ^ The poet 
Gray, writing some fifty years after Evelyn, thus 
apostrophises the Gothic structures of Cambridge — 

Hail Horrors, hail ! Ye ever gloomy bowers, 
Ye Gothic fanes and antiquated towers, &c. 

And he thus sings of an old Gothic mansion — 

In Britain's isle, no matter where, 

An ancient pile of building stands, 
The Huntingdons and Hattons there 

Employ'd the power of fairy hands 



1 In this treatise Evelyn challenges a comparison of Henry 
the Seventh's chapel, with its ' sharp angles, jetties, narrow Hghts, 
lame statues, lace and other cut-work and crinkle-crankle,' with 
the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, and St. Paul's cathedral, so 
far as then built ; and of the Oxford schools and library, with the 
theatre at Oxford and with Greenwich Hospital ; and then asks, 
with an evident anticipation of the answer, ' which of the two 
manners strikes the understanding as well as the eye with the 
more majesty and solemn greatness ? ' He admits that there is 
something ' solid and oddly artificial ' in the Gothic manner, but 
complains of the 'unreasonable thickness of the walls, the 
clumsy buttresses, towers, sharp-pointed arches, doors and other 
apertures without proportion, nonsense insertions of various 
marbles impertinently placed, turrets and pinnacles thick-set with 
monkeys and chimeras, and abundance of busy work and other 
incongruities.' 



CHAP. II.] GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 259 

To raise the ceiling's fretted height, 

Each panel in achievements clothing — 

Rich windows that exclude the light, 
And passages that lead to nothing.^ 

To the honour of Sir William Chambers, himself 
an architect in the classical manner, perhaps the 
earliest appreciation in more recent times of the 
merits of Gothic architecture, particularly in con- 
struction, appears in his ' Treatise of Architec- 
ture'^: — 

To those usually called Gothic architects (says he) we 
are indebted for the first considerable improvements in 
construction ; there is a lightness in their works, an art 
and boldness of execution to which the ancients never 
arrived, and which the moderns comprehend and imitate 
with difficulty. . . Would our dilettanti, instead of import- 
ing the gleanings of Greece, or our antiquaries, instead of 
publishing loose incoherent prints, encourage persons duly 
qualified to undertake a correct elegant publication of our 
own cathedrals and other buildings called Gothic, before 
they totally fall to ruin, it would be of great service to the 
arts of design, preserve the remembrance of an extra- 
ordinary style of building now sinking fast into oblivion, 
and at the same time publish to the world the riches of 
Britain in the splendour of her ancient structures. 



^ Gray, when travelling on the continent in 1739, "^^'i^h the 
Hon. Horace Walpole, talks slightingly of the cathedral of 
Amiens as a 'huge Gothic building, beset on the outside with 
thousands of small statues,' &c. ; and of Sienna cathedral as ' a 
huge pile of marble, laboured with a Gothic niceness and 
delicacy in the old-fashioned way ; ' while he makes honourable 
mention of the twin renaissance churches at the Porta del Popolo 
at Rome as "' of a handsome architecture.' — ^lason's Life and 
Works of Gray. 

2 Third edition, p. 128. 

s 2 



26o VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ll. 

Straw- About the time of the publication of Chambers' 

berry 

Hill. Treatise in 1759, Horace Walpole was amusing 
himself with his Gothic plaything of Strawberry 
Hill. He could hardly have flattered himself that 
this villa was to be the nucleus of a revival of Gothic 
architecture ; but there can be no doubt that it was 
suggestive, leading to enquiry and to a study of the 
Defective Gothic Style. It would have conduced to a better 
ledge of appreciation of this style, and probably to an earlier 
and better practice, if there had been materials more 
accessible than the original Gothic examples, from 
which to gain the necessary knowledge of its princi- 
ples and details. The architects of that time had no 
guides to refer to in the way of trustworthy books 
containing designs of Gothic architecture. Even Sir 
Christopher Wren and the best of his successors, 
when required to build in the Gothic manner, mani- 
festly ignored its rules and detail.-^ It is not surpris- 
ing, therefore, that when a desire for Gothic building, 
chiefly in the form of private dwelling-houses, arose 
and became fashionable in the latter half of the last 
century, the demand was but imperfectly supplied as 
regards satisfactory execution. 

In such a state of matters it was perhaps fortunate 
that comparatively few churches were built. In the 
case of country mansions and villas the zeal and im- 
patience of the admirers of Gothic outran the archi- 
tectural skill and knowledge of the time. In many 

^ This is very evident in the church of St. Dunstan's in the East, 
one of the exceptional churches in the Gothic style by Wren, which 
(with its effective Gothic spire resting upon four light arches of open 
work) has been restored and rebuilt in the present century. 



CHAP. II.] GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 26 1 

parts of the country Gothic castles arose, uncomfort- 
able as dwelling-houses and unworthy of the name 
of fortified places ; country squires erected priories, 
and London citizens rusticated in little Strawberry 
Hills. The Gothic house-building fervour culmi- 
nated in Fonthill Abbey, which was nearly completed 
in the early part of the present century, from the de- 
signs of James Wyatt, and was the wonder of its day. 

By this time experience and study had gradually 
brought about a considerable improvement in Gothic 
building. The careful researches and drawings of 
John Britton embodied in the * Architectural Anti- 
quities of Great Britain' and in his ' Cathedral Anti- 1807-21. 
quities of England,' and the publications of the elder 
Pugin, contributed in a sensible manner to diffuse a 
knowledge both of the principles and of the appro- 
priate detail of Gothic. These were followed later 
in the present century, and with the same instructive 
tendency, by the publications of the younger Pugin, 
of Rickman, Billings, the ' Glossary of Architecture,' 
and by Mr. Fergusson's * History of Architecture.' ^ 

With improved means of study and information i^_ 
the practice of Gothic building improved. Abbeys, P^'^T^^ ^ 
priories, castles and Gothic villas, continued to spring practice 
up in all directions from the designs of the Wyatts, 
Smirke, Atkinson and other architects ; occasionally 
without much regard to fitness for their purpose or 

^ In these works, the wonderful hnprovement in the accuracy 
and beauty of the engraved designs is conspicuous. The dis- 
covery and practice of photography has also of late years done 
much to furnish a more perfect knowledge of the detail and 
ornaments as well of Gothic as of other kinds of building. 



262 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ri. 



appropriateness of site, but in better taste than 
formerly as to correctness of style and detail, and 
with more attention to internal comfort. 
Ecclesi- This improved executive power in Gothic has 
buildings, however been most observable in ecclesiastical build- 
ings, in churches and schools and colleges ; and 
even those critics who have no partial bias towards 
the Gothic style allow the force of the considerations 
that weigh in its favour as a style more capable of 
being adapted to modern church architecture and of 
much greater variety than the classical, and also 
much less expensive to build in, consistently with 
good architecture. In the course of the last fifty 
years churches and buildings of ecclesiastical cha- 
racter have been erected in all parts of the kingdom 
in every mode of Gothic, from the Norman to the 
Tudor.^ 

1 Admitting, with some qualification, the superior advantages of 
the Gothic as an ecclesiastical style, the accomplished author of 
Moderji Styles of Archiiectiire (B. iv. ch. 5), charges its advocates 
with retrograding or going back to what he calls mediaeval times for 
their examples, and imitating too minutely what he calls mediaeval 
forms and ornamental detail ; their writings and practice reiter- 
ating the demand for ' truth,' while by constantly reproducing 
what belongs essentially to a former age, they are aiming at 
falsehood and constructing forgeries. But (with deference to Mr. 
Fergusson) it is thought that the Gothic architects do not pro- 
pose any such direct copying or minute imitation of particular 
early examples. In Gothic, as in Classical architecture, the forms 
and detail belonging to the style, as collected from examination of 
the best examples, are to be taken and applied according to the 
size, purpose, and position of the building, without slavish copy- 
ing. Of course, in restorations and additions, the imitation of the 
manner and ornament of the original building must necessarily be 
more exact and direct. The Gothic architecture in England of the 



CHAP. II.] GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 263 

Assuming the recent use of the Gothic style in Applica- 
ecclesiastical building to have been greatly on the Gothic 
increase, and assuming also that the preference thus g^^uiar 
shown for it rests upon good grounds, what shall be edifices. 
said of the application of the Gothic style to civil or 

13th and 14th centuries is generally considered the best ; and, how- 
ever originally derived, it may be regarded in its pointed manner as 
an architecture of native growth and perfecting. Taking this to be 
so, it is difficult to see why the Gothic in its best period should 
be depreciatingly held up as a mediaeval and archaeological style 
any more than the Doric and temple architecture of the Greeks, 
which is known to have reached its most perfect state at an early 
period of their history. Several of the arts, both in ancient and 
modern times, have attained a high degree of excellence in ad- 
vance apparently of the civilisation of the community within 
which they have arisen. When the civilisation of the Greeks was 
at its height, they still hailed not only the Doric architecture, but 
the sculptures of the Theseion and the Parthenon as the best in 
their kind, and at Psestum they built after the earlier examples. 
Painting in Italy arrived at great excellence very soon after 
Giotto and his contemporaries had rescued it from the platitude 
of the Byzantine manner, and when modern civilisation was just 
beginning to take form. As well on the continent as in England, 
the old painting on glass, particularly in respect of colour, is 
generally considered quite as worthy of imitation as the finest 
coloured glass of more recent times. These analogies seem to 
strengthen the position of those friends of Gothic architecture 
who see no ground for being ashamed of building or endeavour- 
ing to build in that style of Gothic which is recognised as the 
best. Architecture, like any other art, must look to what has gone 
before ; and, if the pointed Gothic of the 14th century is the best 
that England can show, there is no reason why (provided a servile 
imitation or copying be avoided) we should reject the use of the 
precedents of that time. The present age is sufficiently strong in 
scientific and artistic invention, and in the progress made in the 
arts of design, to admit of its building according to the best 
precedents in the Gothic architecture of an earlier age, without 
its originality or common sense being subjected on that score to 
challenoe. 



264 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book 11. 

secular architecture ? The best examples of Gothic 
(and upon which its style is formed) being ecclesias- 
tical, the secular building style must recur for its early 
examples to the grim keeps of the Norman era, to 
the Edwardian castles of the succeeding centuries, 
to the decaying though picturesque streets of old 
towns, and to the castles and mansions of t4ie age of 
the Tudors, when by the fusion of races and the 
progress of civilisation the Saxon and Norman ele- 
ments, in architecture as in other things, had merged 
in the English. 

Although showing a considerable amount of 
thoughtful detail, the Early English secular building 
had no very prominent architectural features beyond 
towers, pointed gables, high-pitched roofs, and its 
adoption or retention of the principle of the arch in 
construction in preference to the lintel.^ But a 
marked change came over it, as has been already 
observed, in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Eliza- 
beth, by the introduction of Italian detail and orna- 
ment ; the use of which in the facades and courts, 
superinduced upon the English or Gothic framework 
with a greater or less degree of enrichment, has 
communicated a peculiar character to the secular 
architecture of the latter portion of the reign of Henry 
VIII. and of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. 

Such being the phase in which secular architecture 
appeared in England at the time when the principal 
edifices to which the Gothic architect can refer as 

* Where a lintel was used, as in square-headed windows, it is 
believed to have been, as now. usually protected by a flat arching 
above. 



CHAP. II.] GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 265 

examples, now or lately existing, were reared, this 
kind of architecture, Tudor and Jacobean, cannot 
evidently be dealt with in practice according to 
strict rules. It is essentially of an irregular character, 
though in the hands of an architect of taste and 
feeling by no means unsymmetrical ; susceptible of 
much variety of adaptation, and depending for its 
effect upon its natural and picturesque arrangements 
and a varied sky-line. It consequently admits of 
a great variety of treatment ; as in the particular of 
windows, which may be square-headed, arched 
and pointed, single or grouped, according to the 
height of the wall, the surroundings of the house, 
and other circumstances.^ 

The question of the application of the Gothic, 
or, as it is sometimes called, the native style, to 
civil or secular architecture was fairly raised in 1835, 
on the occasion of the erection of the new Houses 
of Parliament. The traditions of the leading poli- 
tical and London men of that day were in favour of 
the Italian style ; but historical associations, the 
vicinity of Westminster Abbey, and the growing 
taste for the English style, at last prevailed ; and 
the competition which was opened by Government Tudor 
for designs was restricted to the ' Gothic or Eliza- 

^ On the constructive question of arch or lintel for windows 
and doors, Mr. G. G. Scott, in his Secular and Domestic Architec- 
ture (1858), allows considerable latitude : — ' I claim,' says he, 
' for Gothic architecture the liberty to use the arch or the lintel as 
circumstances may dictate, with a preference, cceteris paribus^ for 
the arch ; and in the same manner I claim for it the free choice of 
the different forms of arch, as may be best suited to each par- 
ticular position, with a general preference for the pointed arch.' 



266 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ll. 

bethan ' style. The design of Mr. (afterwards Sir 
Charles) Barry, which was the one approved of, 
professed to be * Tudor ' In style — of an early period 
in that style, when the detail and enrichment were 
still in most instances Gothic. 
Sir c. Having touched upon this, Sir Charles Barry's 

Ss^hief ^hlef work, and one of the most remarkable of 
works. recent English efforts in architecture, we may be 
pardoned for devoting a page to this architect's too 
short career, a resume of which will aid in illustrating 
the course of the architectural ideas and practice of 
his day. Born in 1795, the son of a stationer in 
Westminster, Barry received an architectural edu- 
cation. He was in early life an ardent student of 
Greek architecture, and in a three years' tour abroad 
became thoroughly acquainted with the best ex- 
amples of the Classical style. He soon however 
perceived that the Italian was more susceptible than 
the Greek of adaptation to modern requirements, 
though he long retained the opinion that it should be 
purified and refined, and treated in some measure 
d la grec. The Italian-Gothic he does not seem 
at this time to have much affected ; the Campanile at 
Florence being one of the few specimens of it he 
liked. On returning from abroad a sense of the 
importance of Gothic architecture appears to have 
grown upon him. In his mental constitution and 
his taste he was eclectic, and this concurred with the 
professional habits of an architect to prevent his 
exclusive devotion to one style. Love of truthful- 
ness, of unity and regularity, and a careful subor- 
dination of ornament to the general design, were 



CHAP. II.] GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 267 

with him guiding rules, to be observed while using 
any style, whether Italian or Gothic. His designs 
for the Travellers' and Reform Clubs (in the style of 
Italian palazzos), and the Manchester Athenaeum, 
first gave him a position in England as a classical ar- 
chitect. Bridgewater House is a later work, and in its 
facade to the park perhaps the best example of his 
Italian manner. A greater freedom of treatment is 
shown in the town-hall of Halifax, some anomalous 
features displaying themselves not quite in accord- 
ance with Barry's earlier principles in art. The 
Grammar School of Birmingham and various English 
mansions afforded him an opportunity, before the 1835. 
building of the new Houses of Parliament, of showing 
what he could do in the Gothic manner, to which 
he had given a careful study, taking the assistance 
of the younger Pugin for his detail.^ 

Considering the great size of the new palace of New 
Westminster (occupying, with the architectural terrace of Pariia^ 
and enclosed spaces, an area of about eight acres), its "^^^^' 
numerous requirements internally in point of accom- 
modation, light, ventilation, acoustics, and along with 
all this the general symmetry of its plan. Sir Charles 
Barry's design and execution of the building may be 
regarded on the whole as successful an example as 
was possible of the adaptation of the Tudor Gothic 
to modern uses. Westminster Hall, recently adorned 
with national statues by English sculptors, forms a 
vestibule to the new edifice, out of proportion per- 

^ Life and Wo7'ks of Sir Charles Barry, by the Rev. Alfred 
Barry, 1867. 



268 VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART, [book II. 

haps in point of spaciousness, but hallowed by old 
associations. In the corridors and central octagon 
historical statuary, sculptural ornament, and wall- 
painting (here more protected from the humidity of 
the climate than in other situations where it has 
been tried), lend their aid to architecture with great 
effect. In the Princes' Chamber, as in other parts 
of the palace of Westminster, the decoration and 
Gothic detail is of marked character and carefully 
applied. The pyramidal group by Gibson of her 
Majesty seated, with statues of Justice and Cle- 
mency, both admirable sculptures, standing on either 
side, is placed in a spacious Gothic recess of this 
hall.^ The central octagon, from which the four 
corridors diverge, is said to be the largest known 
eight-sided vault without a central pillar. The 
House of Lords continues in its design and gor- 
geousness of ornament as originally planned ; but 
the House of Commons has been altered from its 
original form by the ceiling being required to be 
lowered, which could only be done by the introduc- 
tion of an inner ceiling, panneled, with sloping sides, 
so cutting the side windows and affecting the pro- 
portion of the room. In the ornamental and sculp- 
tural detail of the building, external and internal, 
Sir Charles Barry received important aid from Mr. 



^ The group has been thought by some to be inconsistent with 
the scale of the Princes' Chamber and the Gothic decoration ; 
but this matter appears to have been carefully considered at the 
time the commission to Mr. Gibson was given, and the sculpture 
is a great work of art. — Eastlake's Life of Gibson^ p. 205. 



CHAP. II.] GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 269 

Pugin, although there would seem to be no ground 
for holding Pugin's assistance to have affected the 
originality of the design of Barry. -^ 

Sir Charles Barry's regard for symmetry and his 
subordination of ornament to the general design is 
evident in the whole external architecture of the 
Westminster palace. At the same time the sky- 
line is well broken by the towers and pinnacles. 
The chief departure from a symmetrical arrange- 
ment of the parts of the edifice Is the disposition of 
the three principal towers, while each differs from 
the others in character and form. They group how- 
ever well together w^hen seen against the sky from 
the Parks. The clock-tower with its heavy corbel- 
ling at the top, when seen at some distance, has a 
feeling of Italian-Gothic. The central tower is con- 
sidered too small. The river front of the building 
may be thought to want variety of light and shade, 
of which the northern side, from its indented con- 
tour, has more. The distribution of the surface 
ornament, almost in a diaper fashion, certainly pre- 
serves a subordination of ornament to general design ; 
but looking to the extent and mass of the building, 
perhaps a bolder and larger style of ornament, not 
interfering too much with the general plan, might 
have increased the architectural effect and relieved 
the flatness and uniformity of surface. 

^ Life of Sir Charles Barry ^ p. 198, and Letter there quoted 
from the Builder. Mr. Pugin's influence is supposed by some 
architectural critics to have been unfavourably exercised in the 
plan of the Victoria Tower, of which the gateway is extremely 
lofty ; and also in the Gothic roofs of the building. 



270 VIEJV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book il. 



Shall a Whether a building intended for domestic pur- 

poses and living shall be in the Classical or in one 
of the varieties of the Gothic style usually depends 



mestic 
purposes 

be in the on several considerations. 

Classical 
or in 
some 
variety 
of the 
Gothic 



Consult the genius of the place in all- 



was Pope's advice to the Earl of Burlington In the 
style? matter of ornamental building and gardening, and a 
very good general rule, so far as it goes. Regard is 
however also due to the proposed uses of the build- 
ing, to the cost, and to the wishes and taste of the 
proprietor. In well-sheltered parks in the southern 
counties of England or Ireland, a country mansion 
in the Classical style, Italian or Greek, is set down 
with a better prospect of comfort as well as of 
architectural effect than it would be in the colder 
northern counties. Nor does there seem to be any 
reason why a Gothic castle or priory built on an 
appropriate site in any part of the island should not 
be made to combine the principal architectural con- 
ditions with the conveniences and arrangements of 
modern life. 

For country mansions of moderate dimensions 
there is much to be said In favour of the Tudor or 
Jacobean variety of the Gothic, in which the main 
Gothic forms are retained, with a greater or less 
amount of Italian detail superinduced ; and likewise 
for that variety of Gothic called the ' Scottish Baro- 
nial,' for which however Gothic detail Is understood 
to be more appropriate, and preferable to Italian. 
The Elizabethan or Jacobean and the Scottish 
varieties of style are both of them susceptible of 



CHAP. II.] GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE, 271 

great picturesqueness of form, and of a balance of 
lines or masses composing agreeably to the eye, 
without an exact symmetry of parts. And they are 
not only susceptible of great adaptation in respect of 
internal arrangement, but they seem to have a 
character and appearance externally combining well 
with the general character of British scenery. They 
are also likely to be more in harmony with local 
associations and traditions, and with neighbouring 
rural buildings, such as churches, villages and farm- 
houses. 

The present condition and civilisation of the A build- 
British people has grown and been developed out whatever 
of a variety of races and influences, and there ^^J^^^^ 
appears to be no ground for restricting British ^^^^.^^y 
architecture to one style, provided ahvays the build- and its 

, . , . , . ,- , . ., surround- 

mg be m harmony with itseli and its surroundings, ings. 
In the existing palazzos and dwelling-houses of 
Venice, Rome and Florence, there are various styles 
observable. Renaissance, Italian-Gothic and Mixed ; 
the block forms in the case of all of them not differ- 
ing in essentials. In the British Isles, where for 
upwards of a century by far the greater amount of 
new architectural building was in the Classical style, 
while the Gothic, earlier or later, is more native to 
the soil, there is an appropriate field of large extent 
and sufficient variety of scenery and climate for the 
employment of either style, whether in isolated 
country edifices or in cities and towns ; the task of 
preserving harmony between the styles being in the 
case of town buildings more difficult. 



BOOK III 



PAINTING 



CHAf. I.] PAINTING. 275 



I 



CHAPTER I. 

The rise of native British Painting — Art-work of 
William Hogarth — Sir Joshica Reynolds — TJwmas Gains- 
borough — George Romney. 

Confixed within the Hmits set to Its length by a 
regard to proportion, the following historical account 
of the British School of Painting will be little more 
than a series of groups represented in outline. In 
this series attention is due in the first place to the 
w^orks of William Hogarth. Not that Hogarth has Hogaith; 
an equal claim with Sir Joshua Reynolds to the merit rence to 
of being founder of a school, but that, in an age of and^real 
mannerism and conventionality, he led the way in a ^^^^• 
recurrence to the fountain-head of all painting, 
nature and human life. Whether intentionally or 
not, he went on the track recommended by Pope :— 

First follow Nature and your judgment frame 
By her just standard which is still the same ; 
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, 
One clear, unchanged and universal light, 
Life, force and beauty must to all impart, 
At once the source and end and test of art. ^ 

In the case of genius so original as that of 
Hogarth, his talent did not show Itself when work- 
ing on the thoughts of other men ; and his book- 

^ Essay on Criticism, 
T 2 



'2."]6 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book in. 

illustrations of ' Don Quixote/ of ' Gulliver's Tra- 
vels,' and even of ' Hudibras/ gave but faint indi- 
cation of his powers. In addition to designing and 
engraving he began early to paint portraits, con- 
versation pieces, and landscapes with small figures.^ 
Finding this practice not sufficiently remunerative, 
Hogarth betook himself to the painting and en- 
graving of ' modern moral subjects.' ' I have endea- 
Dramatic voured,' says he, ' to treat my subjects as a dramatic 

character • • , • . i 

of his writer ; my picture is my stage, my men and women 
^^'^- my players, who by means of certain actions and 

gestures are to exhibit a dumb show.' ^ Such was 
the painter's own theory of the unique productions 
of his brush and graver now to be noticed. 
His great The six pictures of the 'Harlot's Progress' ap- 
peared in 1733; the subject being treated in a 
perfectly original style, though the idea of repre- 
senting the story of a life and its leading incidents 
in a series of delineations had been anticipated by 
Murillo's six pictures of the history of the Prodigal 
Son. Prints from his pictures were engraved by 
Hogarth for circulation, and were remarkable for 
vigour of touch and expression rather than ela- 
borate finish. The ' Rake's Progress ' in eight pic- 
tures followed. The paintings of this series are in 



1 A carefully painted 'View in London,' belonging to Lady 
Ashburton, and probably one of those early pictures, was in 
the Burlington House exhibition of deceased masters in the 
spring of 1 87 1. A scene from the Beggars' Opera, in which the 
characters are portraits, also an early picture, is in possession of 
Mr. Murray, Albemarle Street. 

2 Ireland's Hogarth Illustrated, vol. iii. 



serial 
subjects. 



i 



CHAP. L] PAINTIXG. 277 

the Soane Museum, and although the gradations 
of character in the successive pictures are admirably 
given, they are not equal in execution to the subse- 
quent series of ' Marriage a la iMode.' The prints 
of the ' Rake's Progress ' are said by Mr. Walpole 
not to have had so much success as their prede- 
cessors, from want of novelty ; and yet in the seventh 
and eighth pictures the new element of madness is 
brought in with striking effect. In 1744 appeared 
the series of ' Marriage a la IMode,' the pictures of 
which were regarded by Hogarth, and justly so, as 
his masterpiece in painting.^ 

Notwithstandinor the popularity of the prints, his His best 

1 1 IT- 1 • • .1 pictures 

best pictures had ditticulty m meetmg with pur- sold with 
chasers. Whether this was attributable to the taste ^ ^^ - ' 
of the time, which had a tendency to underrate 
native attempts in art, or to the enmity of the . 
connoisseurs and picture-dealers, may be doubtful. 
Hogarth had exposed and declared war against 
the trade in so-called pictures of the ' ancient 
masters,' all of whom (from the spurious copies and 
examples of continental painting that came under 
his notice) he branded as the ' black masters,' and 
had given expression to his predominant feeling on 
this point in his engraved prints of the 'Battle of the 



^ The prints of this series were not engraved by the painter, 
but entrusted (with the exception of the heads) to French artists ; 
Advci'tisanent in the London Daily Post^ i743- Hogarth's chief 
source of profit in his profession arose from his prints — a state of 
things not unknown in the subsequent histor}- of British art. 
Being the vrork of a pcintre graveur they had, and good impres- 
sions still have, the merit and character of original works. 



278 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

Pictures/ * Time smoking a picture/ &c. The fact 
however is undoubted, that Hogarth's best paint- 
ings were sold with difficulty and at inadequate prices. 
Nothing daunted, he went on his way and pro- 
duced a number of original works — the * Four 
Hisori- Times of the Day,' amusing and vivid delineations 
works. of London life and manners; the moral subject of 
'Industry and Idleness' in twelve pictures; 'Beer 
Street and Gin Lane ;' the four pictures on ' Cruelty,' 
displaying the artist's power, but with details of a 
revolting kind ; the ' Election ' series (in the Soane 
Museum), produced * after the general election of 
1754, and abounding in humorous satire and comic 
incident. 

No odd concatenation of circumstances or combi- 
nation of incongruous images could show itself within 
Hogarth's ken, but it was instantly seized and fixed. 
Thus we have, in single subjects, ' Modern Midnight 
Conversation,' a scene of drunken revelry ; the 

* Lecture (very appropriately named) on Vacuum ; ' 

* Strolling actresses dressing in a barn,' inimitable 
for its humorous drollery ; the ' Enraged Musician,^ 
in which discord in sound is made visible to the eye ; 

* Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism/ a severe 
ridicule of the Methodists ; the ' Distressed Poet,' of 
which the painting, now in the Grosvenor gallery, is 
an excellent example of colouring and expression. 

Of scenes connected with public occurrences and 
recorded by the satirical pencil of Hogarth, may be 
noted the * March to Finchley,' the ' Foot-guards 
setting out for Scotland in 1745,' which with pointed 
satire was dedicated to the King of Prussia ; and 



CHAP. I.] PAINTING. 2 79 

the two pictures of ' England ' and ' France,' on the 
occasion of the breaking out of the war in 1756. 

In the class of subjects already referred to 
Hogarth is perfectly unique ; 

He followed no master, 
Nor by pupil shall e'er be approached, alone in his 
greatness. 

In historical painting, in its usual acceptation, he Unsuc- 
was not so successful. His ' Paul before Felix' and historical 
other pictures of this kind are deficient in the dignity P^^^^^'^s- 
and grace we are accustomed to look for in historical 
painting, and which is found in the great examples 
of the Italian masters. For such works he wanted 
elevated sentiment and poetic imagination. For 
subjects of high art and pure form he was probably 
otherwise disqualified by his imperfect education in 
drawing. The colouring of his pictures, though 
dealing largely in brown hues, is usually regarded as 
superior to his drawing, and in his best examples, as 
the * Marriage a la Mode,' is remarkable for richness 
and purity as well as for the quality (not too common 
among English painters) of retaining its original tints. 

The portraits of Hogarth, especially those not Portraits. 
painted with a view to any striking effect,-are charac- 
teristic and natural. Such are — his picture of Garrick 
with Mrs. Garrick standing behind his chair and 
taking a pen from his hand ; the portrait of himself 
and his dog Trump ; Captain Coram, of the 
Foundling Hospital, full of benevolence and sim- 
plicity. Of his poetical portraits that of ' Mr. Garrick 
as Richard III.' has an exaggerated air, and the pic- 
ture of * Sigismunda,' though effective in expression 



2 8o VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK ill. 

and solidly painted, is wanting in the qualities of 
grace and beauty. The portraits of Wilkes and 
Churchill are forcible and clever caricatures.^ 
Ho- When Hogarth chose for his peculiar walk in art 

garth^s ly^hat he called ' dramatic painting,' he had discovered 
walk in where his strength lay. With a quick sense of the 
incongruous and ridiculous, he has in point of wit and 
humour no superior among painters in such subjects 
as the ' Strolling Actresses,' the ' Consultation of Phy- 
sicians,' and many others. In satirical and serious 
subjects he is fully more the Juvenal than the Horace 
of his art. Blending in his great serial pictures 
comedy with tragedy, grim and ghastly humour with 
moral teaching, the impression he conveys by them 
is an appeal not so much to the taste, or the feel- 
ing of curiosity or ridicule, as to the understanding 
and the moral sense of man. 

Hogarth died in the fourth year of the reign of 

George HI., by which time the painting style of 

Sir J. Reynolds was already formed. When Reynolds, 

fdSlon about the year 1740, began to apply himself to 

in art. painting, it was scarcely possible for a student of art 

to obtain the necessary primary education.^ During 

the two years he was with his first master Hudson 

in London, who set him to copy Guercino's drawings 

as an exercise, he could have acquired very little 

^ It is beyond the scope of this notice to speak of Hogarth as 
author of the Analysis of Beaitty^ which contains (with much that 
is untenable) some pertinent observations on art ; as, for instance, 
his explanation of the unfavourable effect of time on the colours of 
pictures, contrary to the view of those who think that pictures are 
mellowed by time, given in a note to the fourteenth chapter. 

2 Edwards' Anecdotes of Painters, 



CHAP. I.] PAINTING. 2 8 1 

knowledge of his art, and this want of early training 
renders the merit of Reynolds in taking advantage 
of what appliances were in his power the more 
conspicuous. 

Commencing to paint portraits at Plymouth, he 
produced in 1746 a half-length portrait of Captain 
Hamilton (now in the Scottish National Gallery), as 
to which and others of the same period he is said to 
have afterwards expressed surprise to see them so 
well done, and to have lamented that in so many 
years he had not made greater progress In his art.^ 

Accompanying Comm.odore Keppel in his ship to 1749. 
Italy, and commencing there what was to him a new 
life in art, Reynolds returned to London in 1752 and 
established himself as a portrait-painter. His pic- His early 
tures soon attracted general attention, eclipsing 
eveiything that had been done in portrait since the 
time of Vandyke. His early works are considered 
to be more simply and safely executed, as regards 
vehicles, than his later pictures. One of the first 
that attracted notice was a turbaned head of the 
youth Joseph Marchi, his attendant and afterwards 
assistant.^ A portrait of the Duke of Devonshire, 
and one of Admiral Keppel represented standing on 
a rocky shore, made him known to the fashionable 
world of London. The faulty manner and poor ex- 
ecution and colouring of his rivals of the old school 
was soon made manifest, and Reynolds took the 
lead as a painter of portraits and poetical subjects of 

^ Northcote's Life of Reynolds., i. 21. 

2 Now in possession of the Royal Academy. A half-length of 
Admiral Keppel is in the National Portrait Galler}\ 



282 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book in. 



a portrait character for a period of about thirty- 
years. 
His merit What, it may be asked, had Reynolds done for 
the art of painting in England to justify the high 
position he then took and has since retained ? The 
answer is, that he did much : — he did away with 
the mannerism of his predecessors and set an ex- 
ample to others of originality of treatment, ap- 
proving in this particular the practice of Hogarth ; 
he communicated to his pictures individuality, cha- 
racter and expression ; he displayed a marked excel- 
lence in his management of light and shade, and in 
the beauty and harmony of his colouring ; and he 
was mainly instrumental in overcoming that pre- 
judice against native art which pervaded English 
society up to a late period of the 1 8th century. 

What conduced much to make the pictures of 
Reynolds and other artists known, and to enable 
amateurs and the public to distinguish good pictures 
from bad or mediocre, was the commencement by 
the artists themselves of the system of annually ex- 
hibiting their works for sale. The first general 
First ex- exhibition took place in 1760, in a room belonging 
of pic- to the Society of Arts, then located in the Strand.^ 
tares. 'pj^^ artists then split into two parties ; the main 

^ This well-intentioned Society was instituted in 1754, 'for the 
encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce.' Its first 
move in the direction of the Fine Arts was the proposal of 
premiums for boys' drawings. Prior to 1760 the Society had 
begun to offer annual premiums for historical and landscape 
paintings, sculpture, and designs in architecture. The subsequent 
history of art has shown that these awards were often not very 
happily made. — Pye's Patronage of British Art, pp. 61, 92. 



CHAP. I.] PAINTING. 283 

body exhibiting in a room In Spring Gardens, which 
was countenanced by Hogarth and Reynolds. 
Among the pictures exhibited by Reynolds at this 
time was * Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy,' 
a humorous allegorical composition, and his whole- 
length of ' Lady Sarah Bunbury sacrificing to the 
Graces,' one of those allegorical portraits (like the 
' Graces decorating the statue of Hymen ' in the 
National Gallery) which recall something of the 
affectation of Lely and Kneller, though much better 
executed. In the most admired female portrait- 
pictures of Reynolds, as the Ladies Waldegrave and 
others, the subjects of the picture are engaged In 
more life-like occupations, and are characterised by 
their native grace and beauty. 

The divisions of the artists resulted In the for- Forma- 
mation of the Royal Academy of Arts, of which Royal 
Reynolds was unanimously chosen president, while ^^' 
he was at the same time knighted by the king.^ 

^ ' The scheme of the Royal Academy ' (to use the words of 
Mr. Redgrave, in his Ce7ttury of Painters) ' includes the main- 
tenance of schools free to all who have mastered the rudiments 
of art and are of good character ; exhibitions free to all whose 
works possess sufficient merit ; and to this is added the generous 
provision, that any surplus arising from exhibitions, after defraying 
the expenses of the schools and providing for future contingen- 
cies, shall be devoted to the relief of necessitous artists, again 
without exclusion, for the benefit of all. The Academy consists 
of forty members (though only thirty-six were appointed at the 
commencement), painters, sculptors, and architects by profession ; 
to whom two engravers have recently been added ; and, avoiding 
the error of the Incorporated Society, the management was 
placed exclusively in this body, which is self-elective. The only 
qualification for admission is fair moral character, high professional 



284 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK III. 

In his address on opening the Academy in 
January 1769, Sir Joshua observed: — 'An institu- 
tion Hke this has often been recommended upon 
considerations merely mercantile ; but an academy 
founded upon such principles can never effect even 
its own narrow purposes. If it has an origin no 
higher, no taste can be formed in manufactures ; 
but if the higher arts of design flourish, these in- 
ferior ends will be answered of course.' He then 
remarked that there were at this time a greater 
number of excellent artists than was ever known 
before at one period in this nation ; and concluded 
with expressing a hope that ' this institution may 
answer the expectations of its royal founder, and 
that the present age may vie In arts with that of 
Leo the Tenth, and that the dignity of the dying art 
(to make use of an expression of Pliny) may be 
revived under the reign of George III. ' ^ 



reputation, the age of at least twenty-five years, and residence in 
Great Britain. The government is in the general assembly, and 
in the President and Council of eight members, one half changing 
each year, and every member serving in rotation. The officers 
comprise a secretary, a keeper, who has charge of the instruction 
in the schools, both elected by the members, and a treasurer and 
librarian appointed from among the members by the Crown. 
Members are also annually selected by the Council to super- 
intend the teaching ; and professors are appointed to lecture on 
architecture, sculpture, painting, and anatomy. The Academy 
also comprises twenty-four associated members, four of whom 
are engravers. This body has no share in the management, but 
enjoys all the other advantages the Academy can off"er, and from 
it alone the Academicians are elected.' 

^ Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, ivith Memoir^ by Malone, 
1824, 3 vols. 



CHAP. I.] PA INTING. 285 

To a voluntary duty undertaken by Sir Joshua Dis- 

course! 

Reynolds we owe the fifteen Discourses delivered of Rev 
by him in successive years at the annual distrlbu- ^° ^' 
tlon of the Academy prizes, which (without much 
methodical arrangement) contain, In their collected 
form, many valuable observations upon painting and 
the arts of design. 

By express arrangement at the opening of the 
Academy Sir Joshua painted for the academicians 
whole length portraits of the king and queen, being 
the only occasion upon which he ever did so. 
George III. had undoubtedly more enlarged views 
of art and Its encouragement than his two prede- 
cessors, and from the very commencement of his 
reign evinced a desire to extend his patronage to 
its professors ; but he was not happy in his selec- 
tion of those who were to be so favoured. He pre- 
ferred the respectable but inferior work of Zoffany, 
Ramsay and West to the painting of Reynolds, and 
the mannered compositions of Zucharelli and Barrett 
to the landscapes of Wilson and Gainsborough. 

A year or two after the establishment of the 
Academy the members located themselves in apart- 
ments in Somerset House, the use of which had 
been granted to them by the king — a change of 
locality favourable to the position of the artists as a 
profession. The principal exhibitors during the first Early 
years of the Academy were Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
Gainsborough, West, Dance, Barrett and Angelica 
Kauffman. The year 1773 was marked by the 
appearance of two important pictures by Reynolds, 
an allegorical portrait of Dr. Beattle and ' Count 



exhibi- 
tors. 



286 VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book HI. 

Ugolino in the Tower of Famine.! In the former 
Beattie is represented with his ' Essay on Truth * 
under his arm, an angel going before and dispersing 
a phantom group of vices and errors, one of which 
is a Hkeness of Voltaire. This picture is well exe- 
cuted, but has been subjected to considerable criti- 
cism. The other picture is sufficiently striking, but 
opinions may differ as to its successful treatment by 
Rey- the artist. Painting from Dante is like painting 
pictures from Shakespeare, the representation by the artist 
Dante ^^ ^^ \^^2l already embodied in the poet's language 
^^^ hardly ever coming up to the original. It is so with 

speare. Sir Joshua's picture of * Macbeth and the Witches,' 
painted for Alderman Boydell's Shakespeare gal- 
lery, and also with his ' Death of Cardinal Beaufort,' 
in w^hich, although the principal figure is ably de- 
lineated, the painter has apparently blundered in 
giving bodily shape to the — 

Busy meddling fiend 
That lays strong siege unto this wretch's soul. 

The subject of a third Shakespeare picture, ' Puck 
sitting on a mushroom,' was of simpler character. 
It has always been regarded as one of Sir Joshua^s 
felicitous efforts, and nearly fulfils one's preconceived 
idea of that mischievous sprite. 
Of sa- The pictures of sacred history by Reynolds are 

tory. ' " ^^t numerous. The cartoon of the Nativity for the 
west window of New College Chapel at Oxford, and 
the Holy Family in the National Gallery, are well 
known. They recall to some extent the manner of 
Correggio or of Barocci. 

Sir Joshua's strength lay in portraits. His por- 



CHAP. I.] PAINTING. 287 

traits of ladles are almost uniformly graceful and Female 
pleasing ; but it has been remarked by contempo- of Rey- 
raries that the sweetness and beauty he imparted to 
them was often accomplished at the expense of like- 
ness/ Some of his female portraits have more than 
others an appearance of individuality and character, 
such as those of the old Countess of Bute, of the 
Duchess of Devonshire, and the group of Lady 
Susan Strangways and Lady Sarah Lennox with 
Mr. Fox. In the particular of dress he was very 
successful in adapting the mode of the day in head- 
dresses and otherwise to a costume more graceful 
and picturesque. He was particularly fastidious on 
this point, and would frequently insist upon a 
variety of dresses being tried until he was satisfied.^ 

Li his portraits of men Sir Joshua did not trust His ex- 
altogether, like some of the greatest continental ofciwac- 
masters, to the delineation of expression in the face termpor- 
for conveying character. He frequently added some men. 
little circumstance characteristic of his subject. Thus 
he has portrayed the Italian Baretti, who was near- 
sighted, reading a book close to his eye, and Lord 
Heathfield grasping in his hand the key of Gibral- 
tar. His landscape back-grounds, too, are often cha- 
racteristic. Of his power in portrait it has been 
observed by Mr. Burke, that — 

He communicated to that description of the art in which 
English artists are the most engaged, a variety, a fancy and 
a dignity derived from the higher branches, which even 

1 Wilkie's Observations on Portrait Fainting^ in his Life by 
Cunningham, vol. iii. p. 172. 

^ Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds^ by Leslie and Taylor. 



288 P7EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iii. 

those who professed them in a superior manner did not 
always preserve when they delineated individual nature. 
His portraits remind the spectator of the invention of his- 
tory and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits 
he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to 
descend upon it from a higher sphere.^ 

Ideal Of the poetical portraits of Reynolds one of the 

por rai s. ^^^^^ celebrated is that of Mrs. Siddons as the 
Tragic Muse. Here the personality of the great 
actress is sunk in that of the Tragic Muse ; and 
it is this entire change of personality which can 
alone justify the introduction of the two genii of 
the dagger and bowl. The painter has signed his 
name on the hem of Mrs. Siddons' garment — the 
only occasion he ever did so, except on the por- 
trait of Lady Cockburn. The pictures of Kitty 
Fisher as Cleopatra dissolving a pearl, and of Emily 
Coventry as Thais with a torch, are also portraits of 
a poetic nature, of less pretension. 
Of Among the most pleasing of the pictures of Rey- 

nolds are those of which children form the subject. 
The naive simplicity and guileless moods of children, 
wheth'er of high or humble birth, were never better 
represented than in such pictures as the ' Strawberry 
Girl,' the portrait of Philip Yorke, the demure little 
miss with the mob-cap belonging to Earl Dudley, 
and the sylvan portrait of Lady Anne Fitzpatrick in 
the possession of Lady Lyveden. Some of his pic- 
tures of children in ideal subjects, as ' Hercules 
strangling the Serpents,' now at Petersburg, approach 
the historic character.^ 

* Northcote's Life of Reynolds^ ii. 288. 

^ Of the picture of the ' Babes in the Wood,' in the possession 
of the Hon. Mr. Cowper Temple, Northcote has the following 



children. 



CHAP. L] PA INTING. 289 

Although in his drawing of the nude (any defect 
in this being chiefly observable in historical pictures) 
Reynolds was occasionally faulty, his drawing of the 
face, where there is little muscular development, is 
considered well-nigh unexceptionable ; and his hands 
and arms, though often slightly finished, are seldom 
otherwise liable to criticism. He objected on prin- 
ciple to elaborate finishing of the extremities, as 
dangerous to the spirit and execution of his picture 
and interfering with its effect as a whole} 

The most serious objection to the painting of Sir 
Joshua Reynolds arises from the too frequently de- 
fective durability of his colouring. The colour of a Colours 
considerable number of his pictures gave way in his Reynolds 
lifetime, and of many more since that time, — a fact ^°° ?P^ 

^ -' to give 

too painfully evidenced by examples of faded faces on way. 
the walls of English galleries and rooms.^ This was 

notice : — ' When the beggar's child, who had been sitting to him 
for some other picture, during the sitting fell asleep, Reynolds 
was so pleased with the innocence of the object, that he would 
not disturb its repose to go on with the picture on which he was 
engaged, but took up a fresh canvas and quickly painted the 
child's head as it lay, before it moved ; and as the infant altered 
its position, still in sleep, he sketched another view of its head on 
the same canvas. He afterwards finished a back-ground of woody 
scenery, and, by adding the robin redbreast, converted it into the 
subject of the 'Children in the Wood.' — Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
^ Eleventh Discourse, Works., vol. ii. 

2 In one of Dr. Wolcot's Odes to the Academicians for the 
year 1785, seven year's before Sir Joshua's death, his pictures are 
thus referred to : — 

Muse, sing the wonders of the present year, 

Declare what works of sterling worth appear. 

Reynolds his heads divine as usual gives, 

Where Guido's, Rubens', Titian's genius lives ; 

Works, I'm afraid, like beauty of rare quality, 

Born soon to fade, too subject to mortality. 

U 



290 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

in a great measure caused by the experiments he was 
constantly making both in the materials of his colours, 
and in the glazes and varnishes he used. 

Enthusiastic admirers of Reynolds say that a 
faded picture by him, with its delicacy and refine- 
ment of hue, is better than the best of another 
master ; — 

The light of science leaves behind a ray 

That beams through time and beautifies decay. ^ 

Having regard however to Sir Joshua's post- 
humous reputation as a colourist, and also to his 
conduct in relation to employers, experimenting so 
much as he did in his practice of colouring, it is im- 
possible not to regret that he persisted in his experi- 
ments so long and to such an extent, even although 
his avowed object in doing so was the improvement 
of his art. 

At the same time if a comprehensive view be 
taken of his whole career, of what he has actually 
achieved in painting, of the influence of his art and 
of his character, of his discharge of the duties of the 
President's chair in the first and trial years of 'the 
Royal Academy, posterity will not hesitate to recog- 
nise in Sir Joshua Reynolds the principal founder 
of the British school of painting. 
Portrait- With the name of Reynolds that of Thomas 
^f Gain^- Gainsborough is usually and deservedly associated as 
borough. ^ painter of portraits. His landscape painting will 
be referred to in the next chapter. 

Gainsborough's professional career commenced with 

^ Elements of Art, by Sir Martin Shee (1809), p. 290. 



acter. 



CHAP. I.] PAINTING. 291 

portrait painting, to which he soon added landscape, 
and continued all his life to practise both. He never 
studied on the continent, and paid small regard to 
the conventional learning connected with his art, 
being satisfied with what he called the volume of 
nature. From 1760 to 1774 he was resident in 
Bath, sending pictures to the exhibitions of the 
Royal Academy, of which he was an original member. 

Admirable in their ease of manner, expressive- its char- 
ness and general effect, calm and graceful, the 
portraits of Gainsborough seem yet to want that 
variety and playful imagination so conspicuous in 
the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In chiar osczcro 
his practice was perhaps more in accordance with 
the real distribution of light and shade in nature, 
although not so telling as that of Reynolds. Well 
finished without being highly elaborated, his pictures 
display a certain lightness of manner and handling, 
as though his painting were all done at one time. 

The colouring of Mr. Gainsborough, in general 
as effective and harmonious as that of Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, has upon the whole withstood better 
the influence of time and climate. His pictures 
of Mrs. SIddons in the National Gallery, of his 
nephew E. R. Gardiner, a pure and delicately exe- 
cuted painting, of the Hon. Mrs. Graham at Edin- 
burgh, of Mrs. Beaufoy in the possession of Sir W. 
Heathcote, appear as fresh in colour as if just 
painted. The Marquis of Westminster's 'Blue Boy' 
is also in a state of perfect preservation.^ 

1 In a letter to Mr. Phillips, the portrait-painter, dated from 
Venice in 1826, Sir David Wilkie observes : — ' I feel assured that 

u 2 



292 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book III. 

Gainsborough's whole length portraits are often 

enriched by admirable landscape back-grounds. He 

painted few portraits of a professedly poetical or 

fancy character, Musidora (a painting of this kind) 

in the national collection being inferior in true 

poetical feeling to several of his portrait pictures of 

cottage children. His portraits were during his 

lifetime in much greater demand than his landscapes. 

1788. In a discourse upon Mr. Gainsborough from the 

President's chair, Sir Joshua Reynolds paid a just 

compliment to his memory in these words : — * If ever 

this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire 

to us the honourable distinction of an English school, 

the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to 

posterity in the history of the art among the very 

first of that rising name.' 

Romney; Sir Joshua Reynolds' depreciation of 'the man in 

tation^as Cavendish Square,' at the time when the public taste 

a painter, ^f London was divided between the Reynolds 

faction and the Romney faction, indicates in a certain 

you could, following your own feeling for colour, rather than any 
theory, make blue look well either in the centre or in the light of 
a picture. The " Peter Martyr" of Titian, the " Holy Family " of 
Correggio, the " Blue Boy " of Gainsborough, have blue forming 
both the light and the centre ; and I think there is a certain Blue 
Boy in your own room begun on the same principle.' — Cunning- 
ham's Life of Wilkie, vol. ii. p. 309. In Sir Joshua Reynolds' 
picture of 'the Earl of Bute,' with his secretary Mr. Jenkinson 
(now belonging to the Marquis of Bute), the Earl of Bute, in the 
centre and principal light of the picture, is attired in a suit 
of embroidered blue velvet, his secretary being in red. The 
colour of the dress of the personages in this picture differs from 
the colour in the original sketch for the picture, in the possession 
of Lord Wharncliffe. 



CHAP. I.] PAINTING. 293 

degree the subsequent condition of George Romney's 
reputation as an artist. The President's opinion of 
this painter no doubt influenced that of his acade- 
mical brethren (to whose body Romney never be- 
longed), and has descended, Hke other traditions of 
the Academy, to the present time/ And yet both in 
Sir Joshua's Hfetime and at this day Romney's pic- 
tures are highly prized by those who possess them, 
and may frequently challenge comparison in point of 
natural dignity and simplicity, breadth of effect and 
beauty of colouring, with the portraits of Reynolds 
and Gainsborough. 

Portrait painting, often of a poetical character, 
was the line of art Romney chiefly prosecuted, and 
in which his reputation was made. He exhibited 
in the Spring Gardens room prior to the institution 
of the Royal Academy, but never at the Academy's 
exhibitions. Among other pictures painted by him 
before he visited Italy, was that of ' an officer 1773. 
conversing with a Brahmin,' and of Mrs. Yates as 
the Tragic Muse, prior in date and inferior to the 
Mrs. Siddons of Reynolds. In Italy the marked Studies 
talent Romney had already displayed was confirmed ^ ^* 
and impro\^ed by the study of the Italian masters, 
especially Correggio, of the ancient statues, and of the 
living model. His pictures of Mr. Wortley Mon- 

* Taking note of Romney's art rather than of his Hfe, his 
domestic relations are not here referred to farther than to express 
a conjecture that the isolation in which he lived from his family 
during his professional life may have increased that morbid feeling 
to which he was constitutionally liable, and so exercised a dis- 
advantageous influence on his power of application to his art. 



294 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iii. 

tagu In Turkish costume, and of a ' Wood-nymph 
contemplating her face in a brook/ were produced 
during his stay in Italy. 
1775- On returning to England Mr. Romney re- 

sumed his portrait painting with general applause ; 
while in the Intervals of his sittings he indulged a 
growing predilection for subjects of a poetic and 
sentimental character, too frequently not going 
His beyond mere sketches and designs, but finishing 

often^^^°^ (according to his views of finishing) a limited num- 
siight. bei- of subjects In this kind.^ His theory of good 
execution, coinciding in so far with that of Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, appears to have been that execution should 
not be so finished as to interfere with the expression 
and effect conveyed by the first painting. When 
followed out in practice, this probably led to his 
painting, particularly of fancy subjects, being more 
sketchy and slight than it ought to have been. 
Portraits Among the numerous portraits by Romney may 

by Rom- j^^ mentioned the children of Earl Gower danclnsf, 
ney. , . , . 

the eldest girl playing a tambourine ; an elegant and 

graceful picture of Lady Russell and her daughter ; 

a head of the poet Cowper ; Flaxman modelling the 

bust of Hayley, in which the bust occupies too much 

space, and a portrait at Caenwood of the second 

Countess of Mansfield (sister of the Hon. Mrs. 

Graham) seated in a landscape. 

j^-g Mr. Romney's poetical and sentimental pieces are 

poetic art. mostly associated with the celebrated Emma Lyon, 

Lady Hamilton, who sat to him for a number of 

1 Life of George Romney^ by the Rev. J. Romney, 1830. 



CHAP. I.] PAINTING. 295 

pictures.-^ Her talent in expressing emotion by 
countenance and attitude was employed to great 
advantage by the painter in his pictures of Bac- 
chantes, of Cassandra, St. Cecilia, Titania, In more 
domestic pictures, such as the ' Spinstress ' and 
' Sensibility,' the features and expression of this 
modern Syren may also generally be traced. In 
such subjects as the ' Infant Shakespeare nursed by 
Tragedy and Comedy,' and ' Shakespeare attended by 
the Passions,' Romney was perhaps more successful 
than in his graver historical subject of ' Milton dic- 
tating to his daughters.' 

Mr. Flaxman's character of Romney's painting, 
drawn up at the instance of his biographer Hayley, 
is the opinion in detail of a friend and of a sculptor, 
and as such to be received with some caution ; for 
a friend will be inclined to palliate defects, and a 
sculptor to praise the work of a painter for qualities 
having reference to sculptural rather than to pictorial 
excellence. One passage of this eulogium may jriax- 
be quoted :- -^Ite 

r 1 . . 1 of Rom- 
As Romney was gifted with peculiar powers for historical ney. 

and ideal painting, so his heart and soul were engaged in 

the pursuit of it whenever he could extricate himself from 

the importunate business of portrait-painting. It was his 

delight by day and study by night, and for this his food 

and rest were often neglected. His compositions, like those 

1 The tableaux vivants enacted by this lady were for some 
seasons the admiration of London. When she was married to 
Sir W. Hamilton at Naples, Horace Walpole speaks of her having 
formerly acted all the antique statues in an Indian shawl, and 
writes to Miss Berry (179 1) that 'Sir William had married his 
gallery of statues ! ' 



296 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK ill. 

of the ancient pictures and basso-relievos, told their story by 
a single group of figures in the front ; whilst the back- 
ground is made the simplest possible, rejecting all unneces- 
sary episode and trivial ornament either of secondary groups 
or architectural subdivision. In his compositions the be- 
holder was forcibly struck by the sentiment at the first 
glance. . . His heads were various; the male were decided 
and grand, the female lovely ; his figures resembled the 
antique ; the limbs were elegant and finely formed. . . His 
drapery was well understood, either forming the figure into 
a mass with one or two deep folds only, or by its adhesion 
and transparency discovering the form of the figure. 

In the portrait-pictures of Romney there may be 
a want of that varied treatment and richness and 
beauty of colouring by which the pictures of Reynolds 
were distinguished ; but in respect of simplicity and 
gracefulness of pose, breadth of effect, and the dura- 
bility of his colours, the works of Romney seem 
entitled to a higher position in British painting than 
is sometimes accorded to them. In his lifetime he 
was over-praised by his own ' faction,' particularly 
by his friend Hayley and the literati of the Delia 
Cruscan school ; but the following sonnet by Cowper 
is a worthy tribute to the painter : — 

Romney ! expert infallibly to trace 
On chart or canvas not the form alone 
And semblance, but, however faintly shown, 
The mind's impression too on every face, 
With strokes that time ought never to erase — 
Thou hast so pencill'd mine ; and though I own 
The subject worthless, I have never known 
The artist shining with superior grace. 
But this I mark, that symptoms none of woe 



CHAP. I.] PAINTING. 297 

In thy incomparable work appear : 

Well, I am satisfied it should be so, 

Since on maturer thought, the cause is clear ; 

For in my looks what sorrow could'st thou see 

While I was Hayley's guest and sat to thee!^ 



The subject of British portrait-painting is resumed in the fifth 



chapter. 



298 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iii. 



CHAPTER II. 

LANDSCAPE PAINTING, RUSTIC AND ANIMAL 
PAINTING. 

Richard Wilson — Gainsborough — M or land — James Ward. 

In a community of advanced civilisation such as that 
of Great Britain, landscape painting is a department 
of art which, if properly cultivated and in a true 
spirit, cannot fail to be generally appreciated and 
to be an abundant source of refined pleasure. 

The congenial pen of Mr. Wordsworth has apostro- 
phised this branch of art in the following lines : — 

Praised be the art whose subtle power could stay 
Yon cloud and fix it in that glorious shape, 
Nor would permit the thin smoke to escape, 
Nor those bright sunbeams to forsake the day ; 
Which stopped that band of travellers on their way, 
Ere they were lost within the shady wood, 
And show'd the bark upon the glassy flood 
For ever anchor'd in her sheltering bay. 
Soul-soothing art ! which Morning, Noon-tide, Even, 
Do serve with all their changeful pageantry. 
Thou, with ambition modest yet sublime, 
Here for the sight of mortal man hast given 
To one brief moment, caught from fleeting time, 
The appropriate calm of blest eternity. 

Looking to the variety of its scenery, its coasts 
and sea, its mountains, valleys, rivers, and ever- 
changing skies, Britain abounds more in subjects 
for the landscape painter than probably any other 



CHAP. II.] LANDSCAPE AND RUSTIC PAINTING. 299 

country. But until the time of Wilson and Gains- 
borough the charms of natural scenery were all but 
thrown away upon the artists who practised land- 
scape. The mannered and indifferently executed English 
compositions of Barrett and the Smiths of Chichester g^ape 
were in the middle of the last century regarded as P^^^^^^'^s- 
the best examples of English landscape art. A large 
composition by George Smith, full of subject and in 
the manner of Claude, received in 1760 the premium 
of the Society of Arts, and has been preserved from 
oblivion bv the enaravincr of Woollett 

The appearance of the ' Xiobe ' of Richard Wilson Richard 
in the Spring Gardens exhibition of the same year ^^ ^ ''°^' 
forms a kind of era in this department of painting. 
It was purchased by the Duke of Cumberland, the 
picture now in the National Gallery being a replica. 
A younger son of a Welsh clergyman, Wilson in 
early life practised portrait-painting ; but visiting 
Italy in 1749 his genius for landscape was discovered 
and encouraged by the painters Vernet and IMengs, 
and to landscape he thenceforth devoted himself. 
He remained some years in Italy, studying though His study 
not copying the styles of Gaspar Poussin and Claude, practice 
and painted a number of characteristic pictures of ^"^ •^^^^'' 
Italian scenery, in its beautiful and its desolate as- 
pects as well, distinguished by truthfulness of tone 
and grandeur of expression. His views of scenery 
in that country are sometimes adorned with the re- 
mains of temples, tombs and aqueducts, mythological 
persons being introduced ; sometimes they confine 
themselves more closely to natural features, as in his 
' Lake Avernus ' and others. 



300 VIEM' OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book III. 

1755. ^^ returning to England, Mr. Wilson found his 

countrymen blind to the merit of his masterly pic- 

Wiison tures. A coterie of artists and others who had 

not ap- -111- . - . 

predated Constituted themselves mto a ' committee of taste,' 
land.^^ passed a formal resolution ' that the manner of Mr. 
Wilson was not suited to the English taste, and that, 
if he hoped for patronage he must change it for the 
lighter style of Zucharelli.' ^ The picture of ' Niobe' 
already mentioned, and a fine picture of ' Rome from 
1765. the Villa Madama,' purchased by the Marquis of 
Tavistock, failed to make any general impression 
in his favour. 

Struggling with neglect and poverty, Wilson 
painted many excellent pictures of scenes in England 
and Wales, occasionally making replicas of his prin- 
cipal Italian subjects. He was one of the original 
members of the Royal Academy, and sent pictures 
to its exhibitions ; but till the close of his life in 
1782 most of his beautiful landscapes, afterwards so 
much run upon, remained in the garrets of dealers 
and the back-shops of pawnbrokers. 
General In the features of Mr. Wilson's landscapes, in his 

of hi^^arL trees and rocks, there is often apparent a want of 
discriminating detail ; but his pictures are, notwith- 
standing this defect, imbued with a wonderful feeling 
of nature, his skies especially charming the eye with 
their lively glow and poetic expression. The paint- 
ings of Wilson represent his own mental impression 
of the scene before him ; an impression which by his 
excellence in aerial perspective and the harmony of 

1 Wright's Life of Richard Wilson^ p. 72. 



CHAP. II.] LANDSCAPE AND RUSTIC PAINTING. ZO\ 

his colouring he was enabled to render effectively on 
canvas. The lights in his landscapes are always fine ; 
his shadows may be sometimes thought too dark. 

The merit of Wilson as a landscape painter was Tardy 
first made known by an exhibition of his works in [fo^n oT" 
the British Gallery in Pall Mall In 1814 ; since which ^is merit, 
time (fashion running towards the opposite extreme) 
his pictures have been more and more sought after. ^ 

The landscapes of Gainsborough, purely and 
simply rural and with less appearance of study, take 
quite as high a position In art as the pictures of 
Wilson. He found time for landscapes in the inter- Land- 
vals of his portrait practice, usually rustic English of Gains- 
scenes enlivened by country people and children ^°^°^s • 
engaged In their peaceful occupations, and sometimes 
coast views. His pictures never borrow a factitious 
interest from classical associations, and very seldom 
from the domain of architecture, beyond a grange or 
cottage porch. They are said to have been painted 
for the most part from sketches and memory, and 
although conveying to the beholder the Impression 

^ In the preface to the catalogue of that exhibition, it was 
remarked that the works of Richard Wilson would be contemplated 
with delight, and that few artists excelled him in the tint of air, 
perhaps the most difficult of attainment for the landscape painter, 
every object in his pictures keeping its place, because each is seen 
through its proper medium. The prophecy of Peter Pindar has 
thus been fulfilled long before its anticipated term : — 

But, honest Wilson, never mind, 

Immortal praises thou shalt find, 
And for a dinner have no cause to fear : 

Thou start'st at my prophetic rhimes — 

Don't be impatient for those times, 
Wait till thou hast been dead an hundred year ! ' 

Dr. Wolcot's Odes to the Academicians, 1 782. 



302 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book III. 

of thoroughly natural scenes, they do not, when 
looked into, give that transcript of the individual 
character of foliage, rocks, and herbage, which the 
apparent nearness to the eye of the foreground of 
the landscape might warrant. Gainsborough looked 
to the general character and main features of the 
view he was painting, depicting on his canvas happy 
effects of light and shadow, and sometimes taking 
the assistance in his technical practice of little arti- 
ficial models.^ Most of his larger landscapes show 
the mellow colouring of autumn, and are occasionally 
(in the present day) rather dark in the shadows. 
His Gainsborough's cottage children are deservedly 

children, admired. With less of the arch humour often ob- 
servable in the youthful subjects of the pencil of Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, they have the simplicity without 
vulgarity, the quiet and rather bashful air of unso- 
phisticated country-bred children. His ' Girl with a 
pitcher and dog,' and 'Milk-girl with a pottinger on 
her head,' are not inferior to any similar subjects 
by Reynolds. 

Gainsborough occasionally drew landscape views 
in water colour, a department of art already begin- 
ning to take shape, and which, at the conclusion of 
the 1 8th century, had made very marked progress. 
This historical survey, however, confining itself 
mainly to painting in oil-colour, the annals of water- 
colour drawing or painting are out of its province. 
Art work George Morland took for his branch of art homely 
Morland? scenes of life and rustic landscapes peopled with 

^ Reynolds' 14th Discourse, Works, vol. ii. 



CHAP. II.] LANDSCAPE AND RUSTIC PAINTING. 303 

their appropriate denizens. He is sometimes called 
an ' animal painter,' and classed with Stubbs and 
Gilpin. These were careful and accurate painters of 
horses, Spanish pointers and other animals, but their 
animal portraiture is very inferior in pictorial charac- 
ter to what is seen in the rustic pictures of Morland, 
who was not only an animal painter but something 
more.^ 

Morland derived what technical knowledge he had 
chiefly from his father, an inferior artist, who set him 
to copy Dutch and Flemish pictures, and to draw 
from nature for himself Of a careless and roving 
disposition, fond of low company and amusements, 
he sketched and painted whatever came in his way 
and struck his fancy. He was at home in all the 
haunts in the neighbourhood of London frequented 
by horse-dealers, dairy-farmers, and pugilists. In- 
ferior to Stubbs in anatomical knowledge, he pre- 
ferred painting a cow, or a rough horse in a country 
stable with a seller and purchaser striking a bargain. His 
to delineating a smooth thoroughbred in a paddock ^f ^ur^f 
or race-course. A country girl feeding sheep or pigs, subjects. 
loosely attired rustics chatting and drinking in com- 

^ The light in which Sir David Wilkie regarded Morland 
appears from a passage in a letter to a friend in 1805 : — 'I have 
been seeing a gallery of pictures by Morland which please me 
very much indeed. He seems to have copied Nature in every- 
thing, and in a manner peculiar to himself. When you look at 
his pictures you see in them the ver}^ same figures that we see 
every day in the streets, which, from the variety and looseness in 
their dress, form an appearance that is truly picturesque, and 
much superior to our peasantiy in Scotland.'—- Cunningham's Life 
of Wilkie, vol. i. p. 79. 



304 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book iii. 

pany with their shaggy dogs, were favourite subjects 
of his ever ready brush. 

Occasionally visiting the Isle of Wight, some of 
Morland's best pictures, such as fishermen landing 
with their boats, repairing their nets, and their wives 
going to market with fish, are taken from that coast. 
Scenes of innocent rural life, as country cottages 
with dancing dogs and squirrels, and children play- 
ing at soldiers, are also among his subjects. 
His dis- As in the madness of some people there is 
occasion- "^^thod, Morland's normal state of dissipation was 
^% , often applied to practical uses. His boon com- 

turned to ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

account, panions and their dogs sat unwittingly for their por- 
traits, and an alehouse debauch would furnish the 
subject for a clever painting. In his best time the 
sale of his pictures afforded him short-lived seasons 
of affluence, when he could, and often did, make 
pictures from his own horses and stable-boys. His 
extravagance and recklessness at last brought dififi- 
culties and debt in addition to failing health, of which 
dealers and creditors took advantage to get pictures 
from him ; copies of these being sometimes made to 
a considerable extent and sold as originals.^ Using 
his painting-brush in prison and in spunging-houses 
to the close of his life, he died of a delirious fever. 

1 ' I once saw,' says Mr. Hassellj one of Morland's biographers, 
^ twelve copies from a small picture of Morland's at one time in a 
dealer's shop, with the original in the centre, the proprietor of 
which, with great gravity and unblushing assurance, inquired if I 
could distinguish the difference ! ' Assuming this anecdote to be 
true, it is an improvement on Hogarth's imaginary row of copies 
of ' Europa and the Bull ' in his print of the ' Battle of the 
Pictures.' 



CHAP. II.] LANDSCAPE AND RUSTIC PAlTVTING. 3^5 

* Whatever were the failings of Morland/ says 
Mr. LesHe/ 'there is no vulgarity in his art. He is 
always homely, often slight to a fault ; yet such is 
the refinement of his colour and his true feeling for 
the simplicity of nature, that his best works will 
always sustain companionship with those of Gains- 
borough, which can be said of no painter in the least 
degree vulgar.' ^ 

The art of Morland's brother-in-law, James Ward, Animal 
R.A., was certainly that of an animal painter. It of James 
may be said to be concentrated in his masterpiece of ^^^ * 
the ' Alderney Bull,' now in the National Gallery, 
painted at the suggestion of Mr. West, in emulation 
of Paul Potter's ' Bull ' at the Hague. His small pic- 
tures of a ' Mare and Foal ' and of a ' Bull and Cow,' 
exhibited in the Burlington House exhibition in the 
spring of 1871, are also good examples of his art. 

Animal painting has in the present reign been 
elevated, through the genius principally of Sir 
Edwin Landseer in his dog-pictures, into a higher 
region of art, by the qualities being added to it of 
sentiment and expression ; and also by the more 
skilful blending of the painting of animals with por- 
trait and figure subjects. 

^ Handbook for Painters, p. 55. 

^ The subject of British landscape painting is resumed in the 
eighth chapter. 



306 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book in. 



CHAPTER III. 

PAINTING AND BOOK-ILLUSTRATION. 

The Art of Thomas S tot hard — Of William Blake. 

The works of Thomas Stothard, R.A., painter and 
designer for book-illustration, deservedly take a high 
place in the history of British art. The book- 
Book illustrations of Hogarth in the early part of his 
tion. career have been already referred to. Hay man, 

Kent, and several French engravers, designed also 
for books in the early part of the i8th century, but 
1753. In a slight and trivial manner. An edition (now- 
rare) of the poems of Gray was illustrated with 
original designs by an engraver of the name of 
R. Bentley, cleverly executed, but designed in what 
would now be considered questionable taste. To 
Bentley, as the illustrator of his poems, the poet 
addressed the following lines : ^ — 

In silent gaze the tuneful choir among 

Half pleased, half blushing, let the muse admire, 
"While Bentley leads her sister art along, 

And bids the pencil answer to the lyre. 
See in their course each transitory thought 

Fix'd by his touch a lasting essence take ; 
Each dream, in fancy's airy colouring wrought, 

To local symmetry and life awake. 

1 Mason's Life and Works of Gray, p. 227. 



CHAP. III.] PAINTING AND BOOK ILLUSTRATION, 307 

The tardy rhymes that used to linger on, 

To censure cold and negligent of fame, 
In swifter measures animated run, 

And catch a lustre from his genuine flame. 

Stothard's art life commenced with his apprentice- 
ship to a designer of patterns for brocaded silks. 
This suggested to him the designing of illustrations Stot- 
for books, an employment more congenial to his designs 
taste; Bell's ' British Poets' and the ' Novelist's Ma- f«^ books. 
gazine ' of Harrison furnishing subjects for his first 
illustrative works. In 1777 he commenced a course 
of study at the Royal Academy, and began in the 
following year to contribute oil-paintings to its 
exhibitions, without relaxing his diligence in design- 
ing for books. ^ Among the most approved of his 
book-illustrations, distinguished by their expression 
and delicate handling, were those for the ' Novelist's 
Magazine,' ' Robinson Crusoe,' Boccaclo's ' Deca- 
meron,' and the poems of Mr. Samuel Rogers. 

His exhibited pictures were generally of small His oil- 
or cabinet size, displaying great power of invention ^^^ ^^^^' 
and fancy, beautiful composition, and a colouring 
sometimes more gorgeous than true, in which rich 
browns and reds were conspicuous. Looking to 
Raphael for grace, he studied the colouring of 
Rubens. His larger easel pictures are frequently 
sketchy and defective in vigour of handling. The 
picture of 'Jacob's Dream,' belonging to Lord Over- 
stone, Is a fine example of his art. 

In Stothard's paintings as well as his book- 
designs, particularly those of later dates, there Is a 

^ Mrs. Bray's Life of Stof hard, p. 26. 
X 3 



3o8 VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

very evident mannerism, arising no doubt from his 
great facility of execution and the quantity of designs 
of all kinds he was constantly making ; but his man- 
nerism was an imitation of himself, not of other men. 
After finishing his studies in early life from the 
He sel- antique, he is said to have very seldom drawn or 
painted painted from a model, but rather from impressions 
models. Stored up in his own mind : — 

So vivid were the forms within his brain, 

His very eyes when shut made pictures of them. 

To this may be attributed the want of individuality 
apparent in Stothard's otherwise beautiful and poeti- 
cal compositions. His pictures from Midsummer- 
Nights' Dream and Twelfth Night, for Boydell's 
Shakespeare Gallery, were subjects that suited 
him. But the most popular of his works was the 
' Canterbury Pilgrims,' in which (according to Mr. 
Hoppner) the painter has ingeniously contrived to 
give a value to a common scene and very ordinary 
forms that would hardly be found by unlearned eyes 
in the natural objects.^ His landscape backgrounds 
in this and other pictures are tasteful and clever. 

A department of painting not much heard of 
since the time of Sir James Thornhill, consisting of 
His com- large compositions on ceilings and in staircases, was 
foTthe'^^ taken up by Stothard in his great work at Burleigh, 
o?Bur-^^ the seat of the Marquis of Exeter. The allegorical 
leigh. composition of ' Intemperance,' executed in the 

— — — — — ■ ^ . . .nia 

^ Life of Hoppner, Cunningham's Lives of PainUrs, &c., 
p. ?5i. 



CHAP. III.] PAINTING AND BOOK ILLUSTRATION. 309 

grand staircase, the original sketch of which is in 
the National Gallery, was one of three designs for 
Burleigh, the other two having for their subjects 
' War' and the 'Descent of Orpheus into Hell.' The 
first mentioned, in which Anthony and Cleopatra 
are the chief personages, is regarded as Stothard's 
most important work in painting.^ Another work of 
the same kind on a smaller scale was the painting 
in oil within the cupola of the Library hall at 
Edinburgh, then belonging to the Faculty of advo- 
cates, representing allegorical figures or muses and 
leading personages in literature. In this composi- 
tion, in which it has been endeavoured to delineate 
persons born in distant ages, each in the costume of 
his own time (the Scottish poet Burns, in blue hose 
and breeches, being grouped along with Homer and 
Virgil in antique drapery), the painter is not con- 
sidered to have been so successful. 

In many of the designs of Stothard, as in his Sculp- 
* Canterbury Pilgrims,' his illustrations of Milton and design of 
the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' there is a sculpturesque ^^e v/el-' 
feeling manifested, recalling occasionally the draw- ^^?^^°J^ 
ing of Flaxman in its gracefulness, without its classi- 
cal severity. This tendency in his design was no 
doubt strengthened by his occasional employment as 
a draughtsman for goldsmiths' work ; his master- 
piece in which, and a work of great merit, was the 
Wellington Shield, presented to the Duke of Wei- 1821. 
lington by the merchants and bankers of London, 

* Mrs. Bray's Life of Stothard \ Wornum's Catalogue of the 
National Gallery^ British School. 



William 
Blake. 



310 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book iii. 

the design representing the Duke's principal victo- 
ries, with some allegorical additions. 
1792. Robert Smirke, R.A., was another painter and 

designer of humorous and sentimental subjects, 
chiefly in the line of book-illustrations. The two 
Westalls, Richard and William, had extensive em- 
ployment in the same way. 
Art of The art of William Blake, a designer and colourist 

contemporary with Stothard, is of a kind so peculiar 
and unique that it is difficult to find terms in which 
to speak of it. In so far as regards his paintings on 
canvas, with much originality and often greatness of 
conception, their execution is inadequate and defec- 
tive. In his coloured book-illustrations, the colouring 
is brilliant and not inharmonious ; forming a species 
of illumination applied in a way so bizarre that it 
can hardly be described as painting in the artistic 
acceptation of the word. 

The juvenile aspirations of Blake in the field of 
imagination were so decided that he was bound 
apprentice to an engraver, as a channel in which his 
love of art might obtain cultivation. He acquired a 
fair skill in the use of the graver, which he employed 
as a means of living ; engraving book-illustrations 
from early designs of Stothard, and also from his 
own designs. 

To Blake, however, this was drudgery when com- 
pared with those dreams and visions, the embodying 
of which he looked upon as the proper business of 
his life. To give a local habitation to the forms of 
his imagination, he employed jointly poetry and 
painting. He scorned to avail himself of the assist- 



illustra- 
tions. 



CHAP. III.] PAINTING AND BOOK ILLUSTRATION. 31 I 

ance to be derived from previous art-experience in 
carrying into execution the suggestions of a powerful 
though heated fancy. The ' Songs of Innocence and j^g^^ 
Experience,' with their lustrous illuminations full of His 
fanciful pathos and sentiment, were his first produc- dLary 
tions. They were printed, or rather engraved, by a 
process he alleged to have been revealed to him in 
a vision. He wrote his poetry and drew his mar- 
ginal embellishments in outline upon the copper- 
plate with an impervious liquid (which was kept a 
secret), and he then cut down with aqua-fortis the 
plain parts of the plate, so that the outlines of the 
verses and the drawings were left as a stereotype. 
The plates in this state were printed in any tint that 
he wished, to enable him to colour the marginal 
figures by hand, in imitation of drawings.^ 

The ' Songs of Innocence and Experience' were 
exceeded in fantastic singularity by the productions 
that followed, manufactured according to the same 
process — 'Europe, a Prophecy,' 'Jerusalem,' in one 
hundred engraved pages, and Young's ' Night 
Thoughts.' In these productions and a few others 
Blake's most extravagant fancies found shape. His 
' Illustrations of the Book of Job' are carefully drawn 
and engraved in the usual manner ; and although 
still displaying in plentiful measure his irrepressible 
imagination, they are at the same time imbued with 
much feeling and dignity of character and sentiment. 

1 Smith's Nollekens and his Times ^ ii. 461. In the print- room 
of the British Museum is a nearly complete collection of the 
illustrative works of Blake. 



31? VIE IV OF LITER'ATURE AND ART. [book iii. 

The Book of Job may be regarded as the master- 
piece of this eccentric artist' ^ 

* A very exalted estimate of Blake is given in a paper in the 
Art Journaliox August 1869, by Mr. Jackson Jarves, an American 
writer. Blake's extreme eccentricity, as shown in his works and 
in some of his actions, and his belief in supernatural communion 
and inspiration, have not unnaturally brought his sanity in 
question. At the same time the general tenor of his life was 
liarmless and self-denying, and in his conjugal relation amiable. 

* There is something in the madness of this man,' Mr. Words- 
worth is said to have remarked, * that interests me more than the 
sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.' — Life of William Blake., 
by Alexander Gilchrist. 

In the Burlington House exhibition of deceased masters in 
187 1 was an extraordinary picture by Blake upon canvas (29 in. 
by 24 in.), very dark in colour and nearly monochrome. It was 
described in its title, taken from Blake's original catalogue, as 

* The spiritual form of Pitt guiding Behemoth. He is that angel 
who, pleased to perform the Almighty's orders, rides in the whirl- 
wind, directing the storms of war ; he is commanding the reaper 
to reap the vine of the earth, and the ploughman to plough up 
the cities and towers.' 



CHAP. IV.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 313 



CHAPTER IV. 

HISTORICAL PAINTING. 

The historical art of West — Copley — Great aims and 
imperfect performaiice of historical painters — Barry — 
Mortimer — The Rtmcimans — Fuseli — Northcote — Opie. 

Having observed, in the very outset of the British 
school of painting, the high character and tone im- 
pressed upon the art by the work of Hogarth, 
Reynolds, Wilson, Gainsborough, Romney and Stot- 
hard, it is necessary now to remark what has been 
done in the department of ' historical painting,' in the 
usual acceptation of that term. 

Benjamin West arrived in London from America Histori- 
by way of Italy in 1763. His picture of ' Pylades i^ngfBen- 
and Orestes,' now in the National Gallery, was exhi- '^^^^ 
bited some years after, and admired as a praiseworthy 
attempt in the historical style. His lofty ideal of 
art and the gravity of his demeanour gained for 
him the patronage of the archbishop of York, 
Dr. Drummond, who introduced him to the king. 
His Majesty was pleased with and took an interest 
in the young quaker artist, commissioning from 
him a picture of the ' Departure of Regulus from 
Rome.' The negotiations for the establishment of 
the Royal Academy taking place about this time, 
the hearty concurrence by George III. in the plan 



3H 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book in. 



His 
Death 
of Wolfe 
brought 
about a 
change 
in his- 
torical 
costume. 



of that institution is attributed in no small degree 
to the tact and address of Mr. West.^ 

West was one of the original members of the Aca- 
demy. His ' Death of General Wolfe/ painted for 
the Earl of Grosvenor, caused a beneficial change in 
the costume of historical painting in subjects taken 
from modern history. In historical compositions of 
every kind it had been the custom of painters to 
array their figures in Greek or Roman costume ; 
but West introduced in this picture the innovation 
of dressing his personages in the dress they might 
be supposed to have actually worn. There can be 
no doubt of the advantage in point of truthfulness 
and characteristic expression of this mode of repre- 
senting a modern subject; a painter of good taste 
and resource being able to palliate in various ways 
the unavoidable stiffness and frequent ungraceful- 
ness of modern dress. Sir Joshua Reynolds is said 
to have been at first opposed to it, but after careful 
observation of the picture to have retracted his ob- 
jections, remarking that * the Death of Wolfe would 
not only become popular but would occasion a revo- 



^ Pye's Patronage of British Art; Biographies of West. ' At 
an era,' says Sir T. Lawrence in his Academical Address in 1823, 
' when historical painting was at the lowest ebb (with the few ex- 
ceptions which the claims of the beautiful and the eminent per- 
mitted to the pencil of Sir Joshua), Mr. West, sustained by the 
beneficent patronage of his late Majesty, produced a series of 
compositions from sacred and profane history, profoundly studied, 
and executed with the most facile power, which not only Avere 
superior to any former productions of English art, but far sur- 
passing contemporary merit on the continent, were unequalled 
at any period below the schools of the Caracci.' 



CHAP. IV.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 3 ^ 5 

lution in art.' This picture and the Battle of La 
Hogue afterwards painted by West (both engraved 
by Woollett) are usually regarded as his master- 
pieces. 

The chief feature in West's career of employment 
is the royal patronage he enjoyed for a period of Royal 
more than thirty years ; as long indeed as the king ^^}l^^' 
retained his health. For a considerable portion of 
that time he was engaged in painting for his Majesty 
two series of works, one consisting of eight pictures 
illustrative of the reign of Edward III., which are 
among the best of his large paintings ; the other 
being a series of twenty-eight pictures for the royal 
chapel at Windsor, illustrating the progress of re- 
vealed religion. These sets of pictures were 
studied with great care, the drawing academically 
correct, the execution facile ; and yet, with all this, 
they are defective both in conception and execution. 

But Mr. West was unconscious of his own de- 
ficiency. With a marvellous confidence in his Over- 
powers, he selected subjects far beyond his reach ; by West 
and the result has been that from the comparison reachTn"^ 
his works inevitably provoke with those of the great ^^^• 
Italian masters, which he no doubt had in his eye, 
he is at the present day perhaps rather underrated. 
The two series of pictures at Windsor already re- 
ferred to, as well as most of his later works (the size His 
of which increased with his advancing years), may works, 
entitle him to the praise of academical learning ; but 
we miss in him that vigour of thought and expres- 
sion of character, that rich and contrasted and at 
the same time harmonious colouring, that power of 



3l6 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iii. 

interesting and detaining the imagination, the pre- 
sence or want of which makes the difference between 
a great and mediocre painter. In some of his por- 
trait-groups and works of less pretension, as in the 
family group of his wife and his relatives, remarkable 
for simplicity and breadth of effect,^ and in his pic- 
ture of an angel receiving two deceased children of 
George III. (engraved by Sir R. Strange), the im- 
pression left on the mind of the spectator is more 
satisfactory. 

On the decease of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. West 
was elected president of the Royal Academy, de- 
clining, however, the honour of knighthood. After 
1820. his death it very soon appeared that a generation 
had sprung up ' who knew not Joseph,' and re- 
fused to believe in his large academic pictures, with 
their conventional action and colouring, monotonous 
character and general lifelessness. 

Great Britain is indebted to America for another 
historical painter, John Singleton Copley, R.A. His 
subjects are chiefly from English history, representing 
events either contemporary with the painter or not 
177^. remote from his time. On establishing himself in 
Copley's London Copley began portrait-painting, and con- 
tinued to paint portraits as well as historical sub- 
jects. A well painted picture of * Christ and the 
Tribute money,' is in possession of the Royal Aca- 
Death of demy. The first of his pictures that attracted atten- 
ham" ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ' Death of the Earl of Chatham,' painted 

^ This quaker-like picture is highly praised by Mr. Leslie in 
his Handbook of Painti7ig, p. 292. There is a French engraving 
of it by Pariset^ dated 1781. 



historical 
painting. 



CHAP. IV.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 3 ^ 7 

soon after the event it commemorates. The pic- 
ture may or may not be an accurate representation 
in its main features of the scene in the House of 
Lords, but it has this anomaly, that the peers are 
attired in their robes instead of their ordinary dress ; 
and there is a certain formaHty in the grouping and 
a theatrical effect in the general expression not co- 
inciding with what may be supposed to have been 
the strong feeling excited by the sudden catastrophe. 
The heads of the faces are understood to be por- 
traits, carefully drawn and turned towards the spec- 
tator, so as to give the likeness of each face — a 
mode of treating an historical picture with numerous 
figures not usual in the practice of the great 
masters of the art. The picture of the ' Death of 
Chatham ' with its ' Explanatory Key ' is now at 
South Kensington. 

Copley was so much pleased with the reception 
this picture met with that he chose for the subject of 
his next production another event of the day, the 
* Death of Major Pearson at the storming of St. His 
Helier in Jersey.' Here upwards of twelve por- Pearson, 
traits are introduced, including that of the black 
servant who is avenging his master's death, the 
drawings of the locality being also done from nature. 
With more life and truthfulness- in its action, it is 
an improvement on the Chatham picture. The 
colouring of both these paintings, especially the 
' Death of Chatham,' may possibly be thought want- 
ing in richness and variety. The * Death of Major 
Pearson,' the detail of which is of more varied cha- 
racter, was painted for Alderman Boydell, and was 



3l8 VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iii. 

afterwards re-purchased by Mr. Copley, on whose 

decease it came into the possession of his son, Lord 

Copley's Lyndhurst^ A subsequent picture of the * Siege 

style of and relief of Gibraltar/ painted for the Guildhall 

painting, of London (a small replica of which is in the 

National Gallery), was individualised likewise with 

portraits and accurate drawings of the locality, 

and sustained Copleys reputation in this kind of 

painting. 

In several historical pictures of subjects farther 
from his own time, as ' Charles I. demanding the 
arrest of the five Members,' Copley allowed him- 
self to be less ham.pered with portraiture standing in 
the way of his composition and expression. Indivi- 
duality and character (in the pictorial sense) may 
surely be attained without each head in a large his- 
torical piece being a likeness in reality of the person 
represented. Portraiture appears in its proper place 
in portrait-pictures of figures, where scope is afforded 
for imaginative composition, such as Copley s group 
of the daughters of George 1 1 1, playing in a garden 
with dogs and parrots. In the case of a Court 
ceremonial or a scene in the House of Lords or 
House of Commons, where the faces are to be all 
portraits, it requires an artist of genius like the 
late Mr. Phillip to make a good picture from such 
materials. 
Pursuit Xhe professional careers of James Barry, T. H. 

by other j j j 

^ The first Duke of Wellington is said, when dining with 
Lord Lyndhurst, to have (on more than one occasion) expressed 
his admiration of this picture, considering it the best represen- 
tation of a fight he had ever seen. 



CHAP. III.] ' HISTORICAL PAINTING. 319 

Mortimer, John and Alexander Runciman, Henry artists 
Fuseli and James Northcote, present memorable cai paint- 
examples of the hold which the idea of ' historical ^^^' 
painting' had taken of the artistic mind in Britain 
during the period immediately following the institu- 
tion of the Royal Academy. All these artists, 
each of them possessing talent above the average, 
were more or less imbued with the notion that his- 
torical painting, as practised by the great masters of 
Italy and discoursed upon by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
was the only style of painting to excel in which was 
a worthy object of ambition. With exalted views 
of art they took, for the most part, a wrong measure 
of their own ability to carry those views into effect. 
The consequence was, that with a great expenditure 
of time and talent they have contributed compara- 
tively little to the progress of painting in Britain, 
while the patrons of art, or those who might have 
been so, have been accused of culpable indifference 
to high art, and of a selfish predilection for portrait, 
when in fact English portrait-painting, elevated into 
the region of ideal art by the genius of Reynolds, 
Gainsborough and Romney, was the nearest ap- 
proach to high art the period could show. 

Repairing from Dublin to London in 1 764, Barry Career of 
was soon after assisted by his countryman, Mr. ^^^, 
Burke, to visit Italy and Rome, where his already 
formed predilection for the ancients and historical 
art was converted into an ardent devotion. On his 
way through France he had sent to England a copy 
of a picture by Le Sueur, the drawing and expres- 
sion of which were commended by Sir Joshua 



3^0 VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book in. 

Reynolds) who of course advised the young painter 
to study Michael Angelo.^ The study of the ancient 
statues and of the works of Michael Angelo occu- 
pied the chief portion of the five years passed by 
Barry in Italy. In colouring he preferred Titian to 
all other painters, without however acquiring the 
* Venetian secret ' in his own practice. While in 
Italy he painted the picture of ' Adam tempted by 
Eve,' which certainly does not impress the spectator 
with his power of execution. 

Soon after returning to England Barry exhibited, 
without much encouragement, ' Venus rising from 
the Sea ' as an example of grace and beauty in the 
manner of the ancients. A picture of * Jupiter 
and Juno ' followed, but without exciting interest. 
With unflinching courage, but gradually losing both 
discretion and temper, Barry produced a picture 
of the ' Death of Wolfe,' in which he carried out 
his passion for classical art by filling his battle-field 
with nude figures. Whether this mode of dealing 
with the subject was adopted to show his defiance of 
West's mode of treating the same subject is not 
clear ; but assuredly no more appropriate argument 
in favour of representing the personages in a scene 
of history in their appropriate costume could have 
been brought forward than this example of the con- 
trary method. The English public had too much 



^ In the British Museum is an etching by Barry of Michael 
KngQlo's Jonas in theSistine chapel; and another vigorous etching 
from his own design of 'Satan on a rock calHng the Demons,' 
in both of which appear traces of the terribil via of the great, 
Florentine. 



CHAP. IV.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 321 

good sense to sympathise with these attempts to 
introduce what was called ' high art ; ' and we cannot 
be surprised nor at this day regret that the offer of 
Barry and certain other artists to decorate with 
paintings the interior of St. Paul's should have been 
declined by the Bishop of London. 

The works by which Barry is chiefly known as a Barry's 
painter are the pictures on the walls of the Society pictures 
of Arts' room in the Adelphi. That Society, when 
Mr. Barry was disappointed of an opportunity to 
emulate the great masters of Italy in the interior of 
St. Paul's, accepted an offer by him to decorate their 
large room gratuitously with a series of historical 
paintings in the highest style of art. The subject 
he selected was the ' Progress of Human Culture,' 
illustrated in six pictures — (i) ' The Story of Orpheus,' 
representing man in a savage state ; (2) 'A Harvest- 
home or Thanksgiving to Ceres and Bacchus ; ' (3) 
' The Victors at the Olympic games ; ' (4) ' Navi- 
gation, or the Triumph of the Thames ;' (5) ' The 
Distribution of premiums by the Society of Arts;' 
(6) * Elysium, or the State of final retribution.' 

Pictoribus atque poetis 
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas — 

And certainly no painter has exercised more freely 
than Barry this privilege of daring anything. In 
the Adelphi pictures the aim is high, but looking at 
the series as a whole, neither the conception and 
plan nor the execution can be said to respond to 
the greatness and extent of the theme. The sub- 
jects of the pictures are not exhaustive of what is 

Y 



32 2 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK III. 

proposed to be illustrated, which was hardly to be 
expected ; but the series wants also consistency, 
proportion and keeping, which it might have had. 
That some of the pictures display talent and 
thought may be true ; but defective judgment and 
taste, and imperfect execution, are apparent in all of 
them. The least exceptionable in point of composi- 
tion, light and shade, and drawing, is the ' Victors of 
Olympia ; ' but even here the drawing and propor- 
tions of the nude figures are of very doubtful accu- 
racy, and the colouring is dingy and sombre. The 
next picture, ' The Triumph of Navigation,' in 
which Raleigh and Drake are introduced in the 
costume of their time, along with Dr. Burney in a 
modern coat and wig sporting with sea nymphs in 
the waters of the Thames, is an example of the 
bathos in painting. And nearly the same may be 
said of the parish subject of the fifth picture, the 
' Society of Arts distributing their premiums.' Had 
Barry been a self-taught artist, and not conversant 
with the works of the great Italian masters, some 
excuse might be found for these productions ; but it 
is difficult to allege any for a man with so thorough 
a knowledge as he unquestionably had both of the 
theory and of the best examples of his art. 

This laborious performance was concluded in 
1 784, the painter having been elected a member of 
the Royal Academy some time previously. In the 
course of a few years, his temper and conduct be- 
coming more and more uncontrollable, he was ex- 
pelled formally by the Academicians from their 
body ; a melancholy instance of talents perverted 



CHAP. IV.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 3^3 

and lost through want of temper and want of judg- 
ment. 

Of the easel pictures of Mr. Barry the account Is 
scanty, and such as remain are insufficient to support 
his academical reputation as a painter.^ 

Another historical painter of fair talent, but whose J. H. 
early promise never reached fulfilment, was John men 
Hamilton Mortimer. Bred on the coast of Sussex, 
and familiar from his youth with fishermen and 
smugglers, picturesque and wild in their appear- 
ance and habits, he contracted a Salvator Rosa-like 
manner of depicting rude scenes and people. Coming 
to London about 1 760, he studied with the painters 
Hudson and Pine, and In the gallery of statues 
and models then opened by the Duke of Richmond 
for the education of young artists. Applying him- 
self to historical subjects, as ' Edward the Con- 
fessor seizing his mother's treasure,' and ' St. Paul 
preaching to the Britons,' he obtained two pre- 
miums from the Society of Arts.^ His pictures, 
however, though of some merit in composition 
and drawing, were heavy and defective in colour. 
He made no improvement In colouring, and falling 
into Irregular habits neglected his further art edu- 
cation. 

Mortimer Is now chiefly known by his designs, His 
engraved by himself and by Blyth and Sherwin. and 

, etchings. 

1 One of these, ' Pandora, or the Heathen Eve,' was exhibited 
in the Manchester Exhibition of 1857, and is stated in the 
catalogue to have been sold at Barry's sale in 1807 for 230/., and 
again at Christie's, in 1846, for ii^ guineas. 

^ Edwards' Anecdotes of Painters. 

Y 2 



324 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 



His 

Salvator 
Rosa 
manner. 



Scotch 
art of 
J. and A. 
Runci- 
man. 



His ' Death on the pale horse' and his ' Death of 
Sir Philip Sidney ' are able productions ; also his 
' Marius among the ruins of Carthage/ a simple and 
majestic figure, etched by Blyth. His twelve heads 
of characters from Shakespeare etched by himself, 
and dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, are full of 
expression, though exaggerated. His series of de- 
signs of soldiers and banditti, in his peculiar bravura 
manner, are inferior to the heads ; but all these 
designs are more or less imbued with a certain 
mannerism, increased by his study of Salvator whose 
works had strongly impressed his imagination. 

Shortly before his death, Mortimer was without 
solicitation created an associate of the Royal Aca- 
demy. Had he been able to correct a tendency to 
exaggeration and extravagance, his freedom and 
power of design might have rendered him a sensible 
addition to the British school. 

Among the aspirants in art at this time, John and 
Alexander Runclman of Edinburgh deserve mention. 
Their reputation indeed was confined to Scotland, 
but as their compatriot Ramsay spent most of his 
life painting portraits in London, they have the chief 
merit of starting the northern branch of the British 
school of painting. John Runclman died early at 
Naples, having in his short life executed few works, 
but of much promise. In the Scottish National 
Gallery is a well-coloured portrait by this artist of 
himself, and a landscape picture of ' King Lear in 
the storm,' the figures small but well set down and 
grouped, and the colouring solid and of good quality. 

Alexander Runclman, after trying various depart- 



' CHAP. IV.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 325 

ments of painting, gave way to the enthusiasm for 
history, and in 1766 proceeded to study in Rome. 
He there met Henry FuseH, bent on the same 
pursuit ; and a certain congenlaHty of mind and taste 
appears to have united them in their studies. In a 
letter written from Rome FuseH says : — ' I send this 
by the hands of Runciman, whom I am sure you 
will like. He is one of the best of us here.'^ 
Runciman was five years in Rome, after which he re- 
turned to Edinburgh, where he practised his art till 
his death in 1785. He painted ScrijDture subjects Ten- 
and other pictures, such as 'Andromeda,' and ' Agrip- A^^Runci- 
pina landing with the ashes of Germanicus ; ' but [^e^e^tra- 
neither in his pictures nor in his etchings, though ^'agant. 
the etchings exhibit much manipulative skill, could 
he get over a leaning to the extravagant and fan- 
tastical in his design and drawing. 

Runciman's principal work was the painting of the His 
hall and ceilings of Penicuik House in Midlothian paintings. 
with twelve pictures from Ossian's poems, a subject 
for which his peculiar manner was well adapted. 
His colouring in this performance is above the 
average of such work by contemporary artists ; the 
drawing and design more free and spirited than 
accurate. He painted also a few pictures in oil on 
the walls of an Episcopal chapel in Edinburgh. Alex- 
ander Runciman was appointed master of the school 
of design at Edinburgh of the Board of Trustees for 
Scottish Manufactures, established by act of parlia- 
ment in 1 727, in pursuance of an i\rticle in the Treaty 

^ Life of Runciman^ in Lives of Painters^ by A. Cunningham. 



326 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iil. ' 

of Union. His teaching is said to have influenced 
favourably the taste for art in Scotland.^ 
Painting The works of Fuseh, who chose for himself the 
poetical department of historical painting, are chiefly 
known at the present time through the traditions of 
the Academy and the conservative art of the en- 
graver. A native of Switzerland and a man of 
undoubted genius, the early part of Fuseli's life was 
passed in a desultory pursuit of literature and art. 
Arriving in London in 1763 he read Shakespeare 
and Milton, designed illustrations for booksellers, 
travelled with a nobleman, sketched and drew when 
he had opportunity, and at the end of five years, 
flattered by Sir Joshua Reynolds' admiration of his 
drawings, resolved, without adequate education in 
the grammar of his art, to betake himself to Italy 
and become a historical painter. He disliked on 
principle the drudgery of academies and elementary 
training, studying and drawing in Italy as his fancy 
directed. His original designs at Rome were ad- 
mired for their vigorous and striking eflect. 
Boydell's Returning to England, Fuseli painted for several 
speare" years subjects of an historical character, and when 
Gallery. Alderman Boydell's scheme of the Shakespeare 
Gallery was set on foot in 1 786, he engaged in it 
with ardour and enthusiasm. 

' To advance historical painting towards maturity, 
and to establish an English school of historical paint- 



^ Catalogue of the Scottish National Gallery., by James Drum- 
mond, R.S.A. (Principal Curator and Keeper of the Gallery, in 
succession to the late Mr. W. B. Johnstone, R.S.A.) 



CHAP. IV.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 327 

ing,' was the avowed object of Mr. Boydell's plan/ 
The artists of that time, of all degrees of merit, were 
invited on liberal terms to aid in the undertaking. 
The plays of Shakespeare were ransacked to obtain 
picturesque scenes, and from these no less than 1 70 
pictures were painted ! '^ The pictures were engraved 
for a subscription edition of Shakespeare, many of 
the prints being afterwards published separately. 

This enterprise was obviously beyond the power of 
the worthy alderman to carry into execution. Very 
few of the painters engaged by him showed them- 
selves capable of embodying the conceptions of 
Shakespeare in their designs, or of executing the 
subjects selected. The failure of the project from 
want of proportion between the aim and the means of 
performance might have been anticipated ; and in 
fact, a few years after the completion of the pictures 
and engravings, Mr. Boydell was constrained, with 
the sanction of Parliament, to dispose of the whole 
of them and of his other art-property by lottery.^ 

The best of Fuseli's works for the Shakespeare Fuseli's 
Gallery were taken from plays in which the imagi- J^^^^^^^ 
native and preternatural element prevails,, the dis- preter- 

^ ^ ^^ natural. 

tinctive tendency of his style being towards the 



^ John Boydell's Preface to Catalogue of Shakespeare Gallery^ 
1789. 

2 Sale Catalogue of Shakespeare Gallery ; Pye's Patronage of 
British Art, p. 279. 

3 This occurred in 1804. The shutting of the continental 
market against the circulation of Boydell's prints, in consequence 
of the French war, is said to have conduced materially to the 
commercial bad success of his Shakespeare Gallery. 



328 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

mystical and extravagant. Thus his pictures of 
' Titania and Bottom ' from ' Midsummer Nighfs 
Dream ' and of * Hamlet and the Ghost ' (particularly 
the latter) are favourable specimens of his manner. 

Suggested probably by the Boydell paintings from 
Shakespeare, Fuseli, assisted by the pecuniary aid of 
friends, undertook and painted a series of forty-six 
His subjects from Milton. From these pictures en- 

from gravlngs were made. Intended for an edition of 
Milton. Milton to be superintended by the poet Cowper. 
When the pictures were finished, Fuseli opened his 
Milton Gallery for public exhibition, but notwith- 
standing all the encouragement the Academy could 
give, the public appreciation of It disappointed the 
painter's hopes. 

In his attempts to embody the creations of Shake- 
speare and Milton in this wholesale way, Fuseli 
was — • 

Like one that stands upon a promontory 

And spies a far-off shore where he would tread, 

Wishing his foot were equal with his eye, 

And chides the sea that sunders him from thence — 

Saying he'll lade it dry to have his way.^ 

Some of the Milton pictures, as the ' Lazar-house' 
and ' Sin pursued by Death ' (engraved by Moses 
Haughton), displayed a power of imagination almost 
equal to rendering the thought of Milton ; but 
taking these pictures altogether, it was but too 
apparent that the awful grandeur of Milton was as 
intractable in the hands of Fuseli as were the bright 

i King Hiiiry VI. Part 3. 



CHAP. IV.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 3^9 

creations of Shakespeare in the hands of the greater 
number of Boydell's staff of painters. 

The frequent anachronisms in costume in the 
pictures of FuseU and his contemporaries show a 
license in this particular such as is seen in the works 
of the Venetian and other Italian masters ; but not, 
as in their case, redeemed by the execution and 
colouring. Fuseli's design wanted delicacy and ac- 
curacy, though possessing energy and striking effect. 
He was no colourist ; the apology being rather a 
lame one that has been sometimes made for his 
defect in colouring, that in preternatural subjects, to 
which class his pictures mostly belonged, some liberty 
of treatment was allowable in the tone of colour ap- 
plicable to the inhabitants of a visionary world. 

With these qualifications in art it may seem strange 
that Fuseli, when he became professor of painting iSoi. 
and afterwards Keeper of the Royal Academy, 
should have bred so many good painters in subse- 
quent years. As a teacher in the Academy he 
followed what in his case may have been the best 
course, allowing the students when drawing from 
models to pursue the bent of their own inclination.^ 

The paintings of James Northcote, a respectable North- 
artist and R.A., inferior in talent to Fuseli, are now practice 
chiefly known by engravings.^ After passing some ^^ ^^^' 
years in the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whom 



^ Leslie's Autobiographical Recollections, i- 37- 

2 In the catalogue of the paintings of the British School in the 
National Gallery, which now includes, several good private col 
lections, no picture by Fuseli or Northcote appears. A head of 
William Sid dons, the actor, is a solitar)^ example of Opie. 



'330 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK iri. 

he assisted in the accessory parts of his pictures, 
Northcote visited Italy, studying there with the 
avowed intention of engaging himself with portrait 
as well as historical painting. On his return to Lon- 
1780. don he varied his practice in portraits, many of which 
are of merit, with figure subjects of domestic life. 

His ambition to paint history was at last gratified 
by an engagement with Alderman Boydell for the 
Shakespeare Gallery. For this Northcote did the 
* Murder ' — and also the ' Burial of the Princes in 
the Tower,' and likewise * Prince Arthur and Hu- 
bert,' a not unpleasing composition. In most of his 
subjects there is a commonplace and not always 
consistent character in the faces and persons as well 
as in the conception and treatment, and a very 
obvious neglect of costume. In colouring also he 
was defective. One of his principal performances 
was the ' Death of Wat Tyler,' a spirited picture full 
of action, painted for the Corporation of London. 

As a painter of animals, introduced into his pic- 
tures and designed for books, Mr. Northcote's merit 
has been recognised as above the average. As a 
writer, his biographies of Sir Joshua Reynolds and 
of Titian are contributions of considerable value to 
the literature of art. 
J. Opie. The works of Opie are in the same class of art 

as those of Northcote, but superior in originality 
and effectiveness of treatment. Bred in the mines of 
Cornwall and showing an early talent for painting, 
he came to London in 1780 and commenced the 
painting of portraits. His heads of men were effec- 
tive in point of light and shade and colour, though 



CHAP. IV.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 331 

somewhat coarse in execution. With female por- 
traits he was not so successful. 

Overcoming during his first years in London 
some of the difficulties of his art, but never recover- 
ing the defects in execution and technical knowledge 
caused by the want of early training, Opie pro- 
duced several able pictures, rising gradually from 
portraits and single figures to historical composi- Histori- 
tions. Such were his ' Death of David Rizzio ' in posfd^s. 
the Council Chamber of the Guildhall of London, 
the 'Murder of James I. of Scotland,' and ' Jephtha's 
Vow.' After his election as a Royal Academician 
he was employed by Alderman Boydell to paint for 
the Shakespeare Gallery.^ Opie was appointed pro- 1807, 
fessor of painting in succession to Fuseli and died 
in the same year ; an instance of the caprice of 
the patrons of art of his day, who in the early 
part of his career crowded his studio, then left him 
for some years without employment, and before his 
decease rewarded his perseverance and industry by 
a return of their favour.^ Wanting in imagination. Effective 
and in refinement and dignity of expression, his wantfno- 

in refine- 
ment. 

^ ' In that quality of colouring called tone,' says Sir M. A. 
Shee, ' Opie was at one period of his practice conspicuously 
skilled. The ' Death of James I.' and some of his pictures 
painted for the Shakespeare Gallery displayed a depth and rich- 
ness of hue not always to be found in his subsequent works. The 
desire of freshness and purity of tint much influenced his pencil in 
the latter period of his life, and sometimes occasioned a crude 
and chalky manner of colouring which impaired the general 
impression of his works.' — Elements of Art, p. 266. 

2 Memoir by Mrs. Opie, prefixed to Opie's Lectures on Paint- 
ing, 1809. 



33^ VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

Style of painting and colouring, though rather dark, 
was yet marked by a life and energy and a breadth 
of handling, to be sought for in vain in the works 
of most of his contemporaries.^ 

^ To pass unnoticed the paintings of some other artists of this 
period may seem an omission ; but as any influence for good 
exercised upon British art by WilHam and Gavin Hamilton, 
AngeHca KaufFman, Mr. and Mrs. Cosway, Wright of Derby, 
and the Rev. Hugh Peters, is hardly perceptible, it seems un- 
necessary to notice what is of little importance to be known. 
Without concurring in all the contemporary criticisms of Dr. 
Wolcott, his Odes to the Acadejnicians may be referred to for a 
tolerably just appreciation of the merits of Angelica Kauffman, 
the Cosways, and Wright of Derby. 



CHAP, v.] PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 333 



CHAPTER V. 

LATER BRITISH PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 

The Portrait-painting of Sir W. Beechey — Of Hoppner — • 
Owen — Phillips — Jackson — Sir T. Lawrence — Sir 
Martin Shee — Sir H. Raeburn — Sir J. Watson Gordon 
— Graham Gilbert. 

Considering the admiration excited both in England 
and on the continent by the painting of Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, the excellence of his portraits, and the 
attractive character of much of his work, it is not 
surprising that its influence should have extended 
beyond his lifetime. Sir Martin Shee, in his ' Ele- 1809. 
ments of Art,' thus refers to the deceased President 
of the Academy : — 

Though long the sceptre of his Art he held, 
And justly swayed where he so much excell'd, 
No vain pretender of his time was known 
To doubt his title or dispute his throne ; 
So bright his merits in their eyes appear'd, 
E'en they who best could rival most revered : 
The schools he formed their founder's taste sustain, 
And triumph in the trophies of his reign. 

Even in the lifetime of Reynolds his manner had 
been copied by imitators to a considerable extent, if 
we may take as evidence of this the lines in one of 
Dr. Wolcott's odes for the year 1782 ; — 

Sir Joshua's happy pencil hath produced 

A host of copyists much of the same feature, 

By which the art hath greatly been abused ; 
I own Sir Joshua great, but Nature greater. 



334 VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iii. 

Influence That such copying or very close Imitation of Sir 
art of Joshua Reynolds would be practised by Inferior 
Reynolds, artlsts, and was continued to a considerable extent 
after his death, may be true ; but it is a favourable 
symptom of British art that none of the artists of 
merit who painted portraits In the close of the i8th 
and the early part of the 1 9th century, although they 
may have imitated his manner In a greater or less 
degree, carried their study of it to an extent that 
could be called slavish imitation or copying. 

The portraits of Sir Nathaniel Dance (whose 
painting of portraits ceased about the year 1790, 
when he resigned his academical diploma) have a 
studied air, and are carefully painted. The portrait- 
painting of Opie, which was very effective, and has 
been compared to that of Caravagglo, fell short of 
Sir Joshua s portraits in execution and refinement of 
sentiment. 
Sir w. Sir William Beechey's art in portrait was hardly 

poitrat^^ above mediocrity, though he enjoyed for many years 
ture. ^^ patronage of the royal family, and had many 

sitters of rank and fashion. A whole-length by him 
of Alderman Boydell is In the council-chamber of 
the Guildhall of London. His picture of a ' Cavalry 
Review' (now at Hampton Court) in which the King 
and Prince of Wales are introduced, was rewarded 
1798. with the honour of knighthood, the painter becoming 

soon after a Royal Academician. 

R.A. The much superior portraits of John Hoppner 

^'^^^' show a decided study of the style of Reynolds. He 

was the friend of the critic and reviewer William 

Gifford, who inscribed to him his ' Bavlad and 



CHAP, v.] PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 335 

Maeviad' In this poem a tribute to the artistic 
merits of Hoppner (the tone of which is heightened 
by the partiaHty of friendship) concludes thus : — 

Go then, since the long struggle now is o'er, 
And envy can obstruct thy fame no more ; 
With ardent hand thy magic toil pursue, 
And pour fresh wonders on our raptured view. 
One sun is set, one glorious sun, whose rays 
Long gladdened Britain with no common blaze : 
Oh may'st thou soon (for clouds begin to rise) 
Assert his station in the eastern skies, 
Glow with his fires, and give the world to see 
Another Reynolds risen, my friend, in thee ! 

Hoppner was considered to excel more in his Artistic 
handling and general treatment than in his drawing, of Hopp- 
His landscape backg^rounds have been compared ^^^^ . 

, portraits. 

with those of Gainsborough. He adopted the rich 
colouring of the Reynolds school, and being himself 
a man of refined taste, he was the more successful 
in giving an air of refinement to the subjects of his 
pictures. He was especially happy in his female 
portraits. For many years he was a contemporary 
exhibitor along with Sir Thomas Lawrence, who 
regarded him as his most formidable competitor. 
Hoppner is said to have remarked in public that the 
air of Lawrence's ladies was too free, and some- 
times trespassed on moral as well as professional 
propriety, — a sarcasm which had the effect of con- 
siderably increasing the popularity of his courtly 
rival. ^ 

Well-painted and lifelike portraits of distinguished 

^ Life of Hoppner^ in Cunningham's Lives of Painters^ &c. 



33^ VI^^ OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

Statesmen and beautiful women, belonging at first 
principally to the Whig or Prince of Wales' party, 
are the standing memorials of Hoppner's art. His 
death in 1810 left Lawrence pre-eminent in the 
practice of portrait ; although Owen, Phillips, Jack- 
son, and (in Scotland)- Raeburn well maintained 
about the same time the credit of British art in this 
department. 

Portraits With diligent application William Owen made his 
way, by his truthful portraits and occasional poetical 
or fancy subjects, to a high standing in his pro- 
fession. His drawing of heads and the individual 
character he impressed on his pictures was much 
praised, while with his colouring no great fault 
could be found. His extensive employment as a 
portrait-painter gained him the honours of the 
Academy in 18 10, and a few years after the Prince 
Regent granted him the title of his ' principal portrait- 
painter,' with the offer of knighthood, which was 
declined. 

Of T. Thomas Phillips was a faithful painter and good 

Phmips, colourist, without much originality or elevation of 
1808. manner, but with a salutary dread of anything me- 
retricious in his colouring or execution. He made 
portraits of many literary and remarkable men of his 
day ; among the best of which are those of Lord 
Byron and Sir Francis Burdett. 

Of Jack- Conspicuous in this second group of English 
portrait-painters was John Jackson, a native of 
Yorkshire, who, having shown an early talent for 
drawing and copying pictures, was, by the Earl of 
Mulgrave and Sir George Beaumont, put in the way 



son 



CHAP, v.] PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 2>?)7 

of an academical training. His drawings in water- 
colour (especially those for Cadell's series of en- 
graved portraits) were approved for their truthful- 
ness and freedom of hand. 

Jackson afterwards devoted himself to painting Excel- 
in oil ; his portraits acquiring for him a well-deserved ^^yAs 
reputation. His rich though quiet colouring was colour- 
truer in general than that of Lawrence, and his por- 
traits were solidly painted, without pretending to 
much elevation of interest or sentiment. Those of 
Lady Dover, of Canova, and of Flaxman are among 
his best ; the portrait of Flaxman especially having 
been compared by the French to the painting of 
Gerard, by the English to that of Vandyke. 

The precocious accomplishments of Sir Thomas Sir T. 
Lawrence made him remarkable in his early youth, rence, 
If Pope lisped in numbers, the young Lawrence's cidout 
crayon drew painters' lines spontaneously. After ^^^• 
practising for some years amongst the doctors of 
Oxford and the fashionables of Bath, he removed 
to London in 1787, and was duly entered at the 
classes of the Royal Academy. 

Among the first pictures in oil that brought 
Lawrence into notice were his portraits of Miss 
Farren, afterwards Countess of Derby, and of the 
Queen and the Princess Amelia. On the death 
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, he was appointed, in his 
twenty-third year, painter in ordinary to the King, 
and was promoted to the honours of the Academy 
before he was of the age fixed by its laws for 
receiving them. 

The few attempts by Lawrence in historical or 

z 



33^ VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK III. 

poetical painting, as ' Prospero raising the storm ' 
and ' Satan calling his legions/ cannot be regarded 
as successful, his nearest approach to the higher 
Portraits, walk of art being in such pictures as John Kemble 
in the character of Hamlet, the Duke of Wellington 
on his Waterloo horse, Copenhagen, and his two 
admirable pictures at Windsor of Marshals Blucher 
and Platoff. On his portraits of ladies and children 
he bestowed great pains, using all means to make 
them attractive, and to smooth over whatever could 
render them less so. In the painting of the eye he 
especially excelled. ' While the eye,' to use the words 
of Sir David Wilkie, ' has a faculty of expression 
possessed by no other human feature, it has a lustre 
and a beauty peculiarly adapted to painting, which 
no other art but painting can represent, and which 
no painter represented better than Lawrence.' 

Successful for the most part In his representation 
of female beauty in heads and busts, this painter 
had not the skill of Sir Joshua Reynolds in accom- 
modating the fashionable dress and modes of the 
day to the lasting principles of beauty and grace ; 
the high waists of many of his earlier portraits 
marring the effect of naturally beautiful forms. 
His Seldom failing as a draughtsman, facile and 

superior pure In his painting, Lawrence was not always 
to his equal to himself in colouring and tone ; replicas and 
ing. works executed when the pressure upon his time 

was greater than usual, being sometimes washy in 
appearance and thinly painted. In so far, however, 
as this may have proceeded from too hasty execu- 
tion, rapidity of working was not with him the rule 



CHAP, v.] PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 339 

but the exception ; for in his usual practice he was 
slow and painstaking, and required a great many 
sittings/ 

Sir Thomas Lawrence having in 1815 received Law- 

rGncc's 

the honour of knighthood, and painted the portraits wmdsor 
of a number of persons distinguished in politics, P^^^^^^^* 
fashion and war, was invited by the Prince Regent, 
at the conclusion of the peace, to execute portraits 
of the principal foreign princes and others who had 
borne a part in the war with France. He went 
abroad accordingly, and visiting Aix la Chapelle, 
Vienna, and Rome, painted the series of portraits 
now at Windsor. The effect of these fine pictures 
is partially lost by their being hung at so great a 
height. 

His painting was much admired on the continent, 
and his agreeable manners made him a favourite with 
Emperor and Pope. Alexander of Russia per- 
sonally assisted in the arrangement of his easel, 
and the honours paid by crowned heads to the art 
of Titian seemed to be renewed in Lawrence. 

On the painters return to England in the spring 
of 1820, after an absence of a year and a half, laden 
with the treasures of the art, he was congratulated 
by his royal patron, now George IV., and also by 
the Academy, on the satisfactory completion of an 
undertaking which perhaps no artist but himself 
could have carried through so well in so short a 
time. The president of the academy, Mr. West, 

1 Wilkie's Remarks on Portrait- Paintings in Life by Cunning- 
ham, vol. iii. p. 172. 

z 2 ■ 



340 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK III. 

had died in the interim, and Sir Thomas Lawrence 
was unanimously chosen to succeed him as president. 
When on the continent, Lawrence's attention had 
been directed to the pubHc collections of pictures 
which existed in all the capitals and towns of any 
note ; displaying in this particular a contrast to 
England, and affording some foundation for the 
continental theory as to the utilitarian tendencies of 
the British people, and their national disregard of 
high art. 
Origin Upon the death of Mr. John Julius Angerstein 

National ^^^ banker, who had a very select collection of 
Gallery, pictures of the foreign schools, with one or two 
good English pictures, his gallery being to be dis- 
posed of, the question arose as to purchasing it on 
behalf of the nation, to form the nucleus of a 
National Collection. In the discussions on this 
subject Sir Thomas Lawrence took a warm Interest, 
and gave all the assistance which his personal skill 
and his position as president of the Royal Academy 
could lend, in order to bring about an object of such 
importance to the arts. George IV. is said to have 
first suggested the purchase for the nation of the 
Angerstein pictures. Sir George Beaumont, by 
his personal zeal and an offer to bequeath to the 
future National Gallery his own well-chosen collec- 
tion, and the Hon. George Agar Ellis (afterwards 
Lord Dover) by his parliamentary influence, mate- 
rially aided in overcoming the economical scruples 
of Lord Liverpool's government* The Angerstein 

1 Hansard's Debates, July 1823 and April 1824; Wornum's 
Catalogue of the National Gallery. 



CHAP, v.] PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 341 

pictures, thirty-eight in number, were accordingly 
secured to the country, a padiamentary grant for 
that purpose of 60,000/. being proposed and carried 
in the session of 1824.^ 

Some of Sir Thomas Lawrence's best portraits 
were painted in the years immediately preceding his 
death, which occurred early in 1830. 

Martin Archer Shee, a native of Ireland, had his Sir 
first instruction in art at the school of design then shee. 
in connection with the Dublin Royal Society. He 
commenced with drawing life-size crayon portraits, a 
practice which he soon exchanged for portraits in 
oil. He removed to London in 1788, entering the 
classes of the Royal Academy. Without creating 
any extraordinary sensation he steadily made his 
way in portrait ; occasionally venturing, like other 
portrait-painters, on an historical or poetical subject, 
and becoming in due time a Royal Academician. 
In early life he painted a considerable number of 
theatrical portraits, two of which, now in the 

^ The British National Collection was first opened to the 
public in the house of Mr. Angerstein, Pall Mall East, south side, 
in ^'vlay 1824. On the death of Sir George Beaumont in 1827, 
his pictures were added to the collection, and in 1831 those of 
the Rev. Holwell Carr. Since then, works have been gradually 
added to it by donation, bequest, and Government purchase ; the 
purchases by Government for some years having been directed to 
the acquisition of an apparently disproportionate number of 
the works of early continental masters. Through the bequests 
of Mr. A^ernon, Mr. Jacob Bell, and others, the National 
Collection has been extended so as to include a representation of 
the British school, though still imperfect and unequal ; the pictures 
by British artists being hung for the most part at South Kens- 
ington. 



342 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book in. 



A writer 
as well as 
painter. 

1805. 



National collection, along with an infant Bacchus, are 
fair examples of this artist's ability. His colouring 
has stood better than that of some of his contem- 
poraries, though his portraits are not of the first 
order in point of expression and treatment. 

Shee could use the pen of a man of letters as well 
as the pencil of an artist ; his principal literary 
works being ' Rhymes on Art,' and ' Elements of 
Art,' a poem with annotations. Of these the first is 
more amusing and less didactic than the second. 
On the death of Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1830 he 
was elected fourth president of the Academy, and 
became Sir Martin Shee. In the questions mooted 
during his presidency as to the rights of the Aca- 
demy, when put in possession of a portion of the 
National Gallery building in Trafalgar Square, Sir 
Martin's ability and zeal are understood to have 
earned the approbation of his brethren in art. Among 
his later portraits were those of King William and 
Queen Adelaide and of her present Majesty.^ 

Of the limnings of British artists which have 
aided in continuing to the present time the memory 
and features of the generation following the period 
Sir Henry o^ Reynolds and Gainsborough, those of Raeburn, 
Raeburn. produced in the metropolis of Scotland, are con- 



Scottish 

art 



1 It is perhaps an omission not to refer to the portrait-painting 
of such artists as Sir David Wilkie, the late John Phillip, R.A., 
and others, who, being more known and distinguished in another 
department of art, are not usually considered to belong to the 
painters of portrait. Their portraits may not be numerous, but 
the best works produced by them in this line are recognised as of 



hiffh artisticol merit. 



CHAP, v.] PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 343 

spicuous. Sir Henry Raeburn is one of the few 
good Scotch painters of recent years who have 
eschewed the larger field of London, and have re- 
mained satisfied with the encouragement and patron- 
age they received in Scotland. The same may be 
said of his worthiest successor in portrait, Sir John 
Watson Gordon. 

Without the advantage of a proper technical edu- His 
cation, Raeburn appears to have attentively studied ^^^J 
the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, probably in the "^^^^• 
mezzotint engravings and such originals as he might 
have access to. By this early study of Reynolds, that 
originality of style which was afterwards visible in 
the works of Raeburn was not affected, while it 
may have assisted in keeping him free from the 
mannerism and formal attitudes of the Scotch artist, 
David Martin, who had him for a short time in his 
studio. What Hudson had been to Reynolds, 
Martin was to Raeburn : in the one case as in the 
other the young painter of genius experienced no 
great dif^culty in emancipating himself from the 
conventional mediocrity of his master. 

About the year 1784 Raeburn visited London and 
was noticed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who gave him 
introductions to Rome. After a residence of two 
years in Italy he returned to Scotland ; attributing 
much of the advantage he considered himself to 
have derived from his studies abroad to an advice 
he received from an English countryman— never to 
paint an object from memory, but to have the whole Truthful- 
of his subject, principal and accessory, placed before ^^^l 
him. To the observance of this rule Raeburn partly 



344 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK III. 

imputed the visible improvement in his later works 
and their individuality of character. 
Rae- His sitters were mostly natives of Scotland. 

porSit- Walter Scott, John Clerk (Lord Eldin), Mr. Tait of 
painting. Harvieston and his grand-child, the first Lord 
Hopetoun with his horse, Dr. Adam of the High 
School of Edinburgh, Macdonnell of Glengarry in 
highland costume, and many other portraits, remain 
to this day examples of his vigorous and charac- 
teristic style. His heads were carefully painted, 
sometimes beautifully relieved against a sky or land- 
scape background. He did not draw in first with 
chalk, in the manner of Lawrence, but, after a very 
few lines and markings with chalk, began at once 
with the brush. 

Without the magical touches and broken tints of 
Reynolds and Gainsborough, the portraits of Rae- 
burn were remarkable for their breadth of light and 
shade and rich harmonious colouring. He has been 
said to be one of the few painters who could set a 
man properly on his legs, as in his portrait of Ad- 
miral Maitland, now in the Scottish National 
Gallery ; ^ so that he probably escaped belonging to 
what was called by Haydon the ' tiptoe school.' He 
was not so entirely successful in his female portraits ; 
his picture of Mrs. Gregory, exhibited in the Burling- 
ton House exhibition of deceased masters in 1871, 
being however an exception to this observation, and 
a very graceful and well-coloured portrait. Like 



* This observation was made by Fiiseli to Mr. Colvin Smith, 
portrait painter, of Edinburgh, who mentioned it to the author. 



CHAP, v.] PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 345 

several of his English predecessors, Raeburn was 
inclined rather to give a broad and characteristic 
impression of his subject than to be very careful in 
his finishing.^ 

In 1812 Raeburn was elected president of the 
Society of Artists which had been formed in Edin- 
burgh for publicly exhibiting the works of living 
artists and for establishing a life-academy. He was 
soon after elected a Royal Academician and In the 
year preceding his death was knighted by George 
IV. on the occasion of the royal visit to Scotland. 

Wllkle's remark on the similarity of style of the Resem- 

portralt-palnters of the British school, particularly Veias- 

Sir Henry Raeburn, and of Velasquez, is well known. ^^^^' 

In a letter from Madrid to his friend Mr. Phil- Feb. 14, 

182S 
lips the portrait-painter, he says : — ' There is much 

resemblance betw^een Velasquez and the works of 

some of the chiefs of the English school ; but, of 

all, Raeburn resembles him most, In whose square 

touch In heads, hands and accessories, I see the 

very counterpart of the Spaniard.' ^ 



^ In the Scottish Gallery at Edinburgh are eight portraits by 
Raeburn, of which two are female portraits. In the notice of Sir 
Henry Raeburn in the catalogue of this collection, he is re- 
marked to have adopted Sir Joshua Reynolds' great principle in 
the arrangement of a picture, of always making the leading 
element breadth ; — ' But he carried out this principle in a manner 
and with a feeling in many respects peculiarly his own. He 
seldom attempted by thick impasto and semi-transparent painting 
to produce texture and luminous effect, but adopted the opposite 
mode of painting in a low tone with a sharp touch, working the 
colours with little admixture of any unctuous medium.' 

2 Cunningham's Life of Wilkie^ ii. 504. 



346 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

Scottish portrait-painting, thus fairly established 

by Sir Henry Raeburn, has since his decease 

continued to maintain a position of its own in 

point of colouring and general treatment. The 

George portraits of George Watson, who was president of 

Geddes^' the Scottish Academy in its unchartered state of 

^^ existence, althoupfh inferior to those of Sir Henrv 

Duncan. ' c> j 

Raeburn, take respectable rank both as characteristic 
likenesses and also in point of colour.^ And the 
same may be said of the portraits and fancy portraits 
of Andrew Geddes, a Scotch painter of considerable 
talent, who in his later years practised and exhibited 
1832. in London and was made an associate of the Royal 
Academy. 

The portrait-painting of another northern artist, 
Thomas Duncan, A.R.A., although his taste lay 
more in the direction of historical genre, was like- 
wise above an average merit, being distinguished by 
its expression of character and delicate appreciation 
of feminine grace and beauty. 

Mr. G. Watson was in extensive employment 
during the latter portion of Sir Henry Raeburn's life- 



^ The grant of a charter to the Scottish Academy was delayed 
till November 1838, when Her Majesty signed the charter incor- 
porating it as ' The Royal Scottish Academy for Painting, Sculpture, 
and Architecture.' — Notes of the early history of the Royal Scottish 
Academy, by Sir George Harvey, P.R.S.A. 

There are thirty members and twenty associates of the Royal 
Scottish Academy. The Academy have a school under their own 
direction for the study of the living model, but having no con- 
nection with the school of the Board of Trustees for Manu- 
factures. They have also a good art-library, which, within the 
last few years, has been made available to students as well as 
to members and associates. 



CHAP, v.] PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 347 

time ; but even before his own decease the portrait- 1837. 
painting of his nephew John Watson (afterwards 
Sir John Watson Gordon) had gained the ascen- 
dency in Scotland so long held by Raeburn. . Mr. 
Watson Gordon, originally intended for an army Portraits 
engineer, had been sent to the Trustees' academy watson* 
for drawing in Edinburgh, then conducted by John Gordon. 
Graham, where his progress was such that, following 
the bent of his personal inclination, his profession 
was changed for that of an artist. His education in 
art was mostly acquired under Graham and from the 
access he had to the studios of Raeburn and his 
uncle George Watson. He never studied abroad. 

Watson Gordon at first attempted half-historical 
or fancy subjects, but soon discovering his strength 
to lie in portrait, he latterly confined himself to that 
department. He was an early member and zealous 
friend of the Scottish Academy, and, on the death of 
Sir William Allan, was chosen its president and re- 1850. 
ceived the honour of knighthood. He contributed 
also to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy, and 
was elected a member of that body. 

Sir J. Watson Gordon's portraits were distin- 
guished by their truthfulness, ease, and simplicity of 
treatment ; his male being better than his female 
portraits. He rejected, perhaps to a fault, the aid 
of ornament in backgrounds ; and his portraits of Their 
' gentlemen in black,' however true the flesh colour, of orna- 
have sometimes a flat and sombre look from his ^^^^"^' 
dispensing, when possible, with rich colouring in his 
picture. In the portraits of men with strongly- 
marked lines and shrewd expression of face he is 



34^ V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book III. 

considered to have had few equals ; as in his por- 
traits of the Provost of Peterhead, and of Professor 
Wilson in the National Portrait Gallery. In the 
Paris Exhibition of 1855 his works were highly 
appreciated and rewarded with a medal. 
Graham T\\^ portraits of ladies by John Graham Gilbert, 
his R.S.A., who died in 1866, were generally thought 

portraits. supeHor to the female portraits of Watson Gordon. 
The son of a West India merchant of Glasgow, 
Graham Gilbert, after a thorough art-education at 
home and abroad, painted portraits for a series of 
years in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Although more 
successful in female subjects, many of his male 
portraits were also works of great merit, of which an 
instance is seen in his whole length of Sir John 
Watson Gordon in the Scottish National Gallery. 
Usually attracting the eye by their positive and 
glowing colours, his portraits of ladies had an air of 
elegance and grace, and produced in an exhibition 
room a very pleasing effect. Graham Gilbert occa- 
sionally painted female subjects of a poetical cha- 
racter, varying the treatment of his pictures by 
adopting Greek or Italian or Scottish rustic costume. 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 349 



CHAPTER VI. 

LATER BRLTLSH HISTORICAL PAINTING, 

Hay don — Hilton — Etty — David Scott — Change in the man- 
ner of historical painting — Sir D. Wilkie — Sir C. 
Eastlake — Sir W. Allan — Thomas Duncan — High art 
in historical painting displayed in the works of Dyce and 
Maclise. 

Undeterred by the ill success of some of their 
immediate predecessors, several British artists of un- 
impeachable talent continued in the early portion of 
the present century the pursuit of historical paint- 
ing. The encouragement they met with was the 
reverse of satisfactory to the lovers of what Is called 
' high art' Not to say that historical painting 
received no encouragement ; but the commissions 
for and purchases of historical pictures were com- 
paratively rare, and proceeded often from other 
motives than a predilection for this species of art. 
Whether the art itself was ahvays of a quality to 
merit greater encouragement than It got Is another 
question. 

The best . historical works of Benjamin Robert Histo- 
Haydon are admitted on all hands to have dis- "f^g ^^ 
played, with a certain degree of coarseness, high Haydon. 
qualities of painting. The son of a bookseller at 
Plymouth, he entered the schools of the Royal 



350 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book in. 

Academy in 1804, his first exhibited picture being 
a ' Repose in Egypt,' which was bought by Mr. 
Hope, author of * Anastasius.' An enthusiast in his 
art he was encouraged by the patronage of the Earl 
of Mulgrave, for whom he painted a picture of 
1809. ' Dentatus,' a bold and vigorous composition.^ 
With the hanging of this picture in the Academy's 
exhibition Haydon found great fault, and it gave 
rise to a continuing quarrel on his part with the 
Academy. 
Personal Of an excitable ill-regulated temper, and pos- 
aimgs. sessed by a spirit of inordinate self-conceit, this 
enthusiastic painter of history failed in turning to 
good account his talents and prospects. He quar- 
relled upon trifles with Sir George Beaumont and 
others who were inclined to befriend him, abused 
the Royal Academy as good for nothing but a 
school, and vilified portrait-painting while having 
recourse to it for subsistence ; at the same time 
magnifying himself and charging the public with 
want of taste and neglect of high art.^ 
Fate of Mr. Haydon's 'Judgment of Solomon,' 'Raising 

pictures, of Lazarus,' ' Entry of Christ into Jerusalem,' 
and several other pictures, were works of decided 
merit ; but somehow, even when disposed of to 
purchasers, they seldom found fit resting-places. 
When in 1827 a subscription was got up to relieve 
the painter of his pecuniary difficulties, he gave the 
following account of the disposition of his great 

^ Art Journal^ 1856, p. 181. 

2 Autobiography of B. R, Haydon^ edited by Mr, T. Taylor. 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 351 

pictures : — 'My "Judgment of Solomon" is rolled up 
in a warehouse in the Borough ; my " Entry into 
Jerusalem," once graced by the enthusiasm of the rank 
and beauty of the three kingdoms, is doubled up in 
a back room in Holborn ; my " Lazarus " is in an 
upholsterer's shop in Mount Street, and my " Cruci- 
fixion" in a hay-loft at Lisson Grove.' ^ 

In the National collection is a picture by Haydon, 
* Punch on May- Day,' not in the historical style, 
but one of his later productions. With some coarse- 
ness and caricaturing it shows great power of in- 
vention and vigour of colouring. 

By the sale and occasional exhibition of his prin- 
cipal pictures, and by having recourse, when in straits, 
to the painting of portraits and of trivial subjects, 
such as ' Waiting for the Times ' and the ' Mock 
Election,' Haydon realised at intervals considerable 
sums of money ; but to whatever cause it may be 
attributable, his later life was a continuing scene of 
painful distress and was brought at last by suicide 1846. 
to a melancholy close.'^ 

^ Autobiography of B. R. Haydo7i. The following entry in the 
painter's journal occurs on the completion of the picture of 
' Lazarus ' : — ' O God, grant that it may reach the National 
Gallery in a few years, and be placed in fair competition with the 
Sebastian del Piombo. I ask no more to obtain justice from the 
world ! ' 

2 The following is an estimate of Haydon by a professional 
writer (Mr. Redgrave) : — ' He was a good anatomist and draughts- 
man ; his colour was effective ; his treatment of his subject 
and conception original and powerful ; but his works have a 
hurried and incomplete look ; his finish is coarse, sometimes 
woolly, and not free from vulgarity.' — Century of Painters^ ii. 197. 



352 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

High art William Hilton, a regular student of the Royal 
Hilton Academy, adopted history as his theme and never 
departed from it under the most discouraging cir- 
1803. cumstances. His first exhibited picture, ' Banditti,' 
was followed by subjects from the classics and from 
sacred history and poetry. He twice had a pre- 
mium awarded to him by the British Institution in 
Pall Mall, whose directors purchased, at the price 
of 550 guineas, his picture of ' Mary anointing the 
Feet of Jesus,' presenting it to the church of St. 
Michael in the City. In 1808 was exhibited one 
of his principal pictures, the ' Rape of Europa,' 
painted for the Earl of Egremont. In two years 
after Hilton was made an academician ; and he was 
subsequently appointed Keeper of the Academy, the 
salary of which office may be said to have preserved 
him in his later life from want. ' Edith discover- 
ing the body of Harold,' ' Rebekah at the Well,' 
and several smaller studies, were purchased by Mr. 
Vernon and now form part of the National collec- 
tion. At his death in 1839 several of Hilton's best 
works remained unsold, one of which, ' Serena 
rescued by the Red-Cross Knight,' was bought of 
his executors by an association of subscribers and 
presented to the National Gallery.^ 

The pictures of Mr. Hilton show the true feeling 
of historic art, and are distinguished by a certain 
grandeur of conception, as well as by skilful com- 
position and appropriate expression. From an inju- 
dicious method of mixing and applying his colours, 

1 ArtJo2irnal, 1855, p. 253. 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 353 

the pictures of this artist are rapidly deterio- 
rating.^ 

The painting of WilHam Etty, the best examples Painting 
of which are of historical character, has by the ° ^* 
superiority of its colour as well as other qualities 
won for him a high position in the British school. 
A native of York, Etty was entered in 1807 a 
student of the Royal Academy, and he afterwards 
passed a year in the studio of Sir Thomas Law- 
rence. About the close of his educational period, 
he remarks in his autobiography, that he was then 
only beginning to master the great key to art, power 
of execution. 

In the life-school of the Academy he was a con- 
stant student, preferring the use of the paint-brush 
to the crayon. He gained no medals of any kind, 
and the early pictures he sent to the exhibitions 
were rejected. Not disheartened, he set himself 
earnestly to improve in drawing, in which his early 
pictures were defective ; a circumstance in so far 
remarkable as the studio of Sir Thomas Lawrence 
was more a school of drawing than of painting. At 
last his pictures of the ' Coral Finders ' and ' Cleo- 
patra on the Cydnus ' attracted favourable notice. 1821. 

At this time, as well as for some years afterwards, 

1 Worn urn's Catalogue of the National Gallery. Hilton's pic- 
ture of ^Rebekah' at South Kensington is under glass, and ap- 
pears in tolerable preservation ; but his pictures, with the excep- 
tion of ' Rebekah,' and also those of several other artists, are in 
a worse condition. It is matter of congratulation that the pictures 
at South Kensington are now placed in solidly built and dry rooms, 
and will probably be secured in the future against cold draughts 
and humidity. 

A A 



354 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book in. 

More ap- Etty's powers were more appreciated by his pro- 
by^artis^ts fessional brethren than by the pubHc. Soon after 
the^ub- these pictures were exhibited, he received the 
lie. honours of the Academy. 

1823. To improve himself in his art, he visited Italy, 
finding himself most at home in Venice. Here he 
made studies in the morning from Paul Veronese 
and Tintoretto, and (to a less extent) from Titian 
and Bonifazio, and in the evening had recourse to 

His the sctwla del mcdo. Venice he considered the best 

Venice, school of painting in Italy for colour and chiar os- 

curo ; an opinion also held by Sir Thomas Lawrence.^ 

Soon after his return to England, not neglecting 

cabinet-sized pictures, but strengthened in his art 

and his ideas of painting elevated by his Venetian 

studies, Etty produced several large works of the 

Etty's historical-epic class, examples of brilliant and truth- 
large 
historical ful colouring, especially in the nude. The first of 

these, the * Combat, or Woman pleading for the 
vanquished,' is not surpassed by any picture of the 
British school in originality and vigour of concep- 
tion, grandeur of design and colouring. When exhi- 

1824. bited in London this picture was highly praised, but 
it was left to be purchased at the price of 300/. by 
a brother artist, John Martin, from whom it was after- 
wards acquired by the Royal Scottish Academy. The 
' Combat' was followed by the ' History of Judith ' 
in three magnificent gallery pictures, and afterwards 
by the painting of ' Benaiah killing two men of 

' Life of Williain Etty, R.A., by Alexander Gilchrist, vol. i. 
p. 167. 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 355 

Moab,' a composition of three figures, like the 
' Combat/ and of nearly equal merit. The three 
pictures of ' Judith ' and the ' Benaiah ' were like- 
wise acquired by the Scottish Academy, and are 1828. 
now in the Scottish National Gallery.^ It was 
equally satisfactory to the painter and creditable to Secured 
the discernment of the northern Academy that these tish 
masterpieces of modern art should have been thus GaHerT 
secured and fitly placed together.^ 

Mr. Etty painted several other large gallery 

^ Life of Etty, vol. i. ch. 16. 

^ The collection exhibited in the Scottish National Gallery 
consists of: i. Pictures collected by the directors of the Royal 
Institution ; 2. Pictures, bronzes, &c., bequeathed by Sir James 
Erskine of Torrie ; 3. Ancient and modern works, the property 
of the Royal Scottish Academy; 4. Pictures belonging to the 
Board of Trustees for Manufactures, acquired by purchase or gift 
for the National Gallery; 5. Modern works purchased by the 
Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts with funds set 
apart for this purpose by their charter ; 6. Pictures lent or de- 
posited by private parties. — Drummond's Catalogue^ Preface. 

The foundation-stone of the building in which this collection is 
placed, and in which also the Royal Scottish Academy are 
accommodated and their annual exhibitions held, was laid by 
the late Prince Consort in 1850, upon which occasion his Royal 
Highness appropriately called attention to the important influence 
exercised by the Fine Arts upon the development of the mind 
and feeling of a people ; expressing a hope that the impulse given 
to their culture, and the increasing attention bestowed on it by 
the people, would not only tend to refine and elevate the national 
taste, but would also lead to the production of works which, 
if left behind as memorials of the age, would give to after 
generations an adequate idea of our advanced state of civili- 
sation. His Royal Highness referred with satisfaction to the 
circumstance that part of the funds rendered available for the 
support of the undertaking were derived from the ancient grant 
(of 2,000/. per annum) which at the Union was secured to 

A A 2 



art. 



356 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART, [book ill. 

pictures, the ' Parting of Hero and Leander/ 
* Ulysses and the Syrens,' and three compositions 
from the history of Joan of Arc. Of his pictures 
of a cabinet size, which are mostly of a poetical 
character, the examples in the National Gallery may 
probably be taken as a fair specimen ; but compared 
with his great works in Scotland, they convey a 
very inadequate idea of the powers of Etty in the 
highest walk of art. 
High aim Like Several English painters whose works have 
Scott's been already noticed, David Scott of Edin- 
burgh, an artist of much power and capability, had 
higher aspirations and conceptions of art than he 
had ability of execution. The son of an eminent 
landscape engraver, Mr. Scott, after engraving a 
series of designs from Stothard, commenced painting 
subjects of scripture history and poetry. Becoming 
a member of the Royal Scottish Academy, he visited 
Italy in 1832, carefully studying anatomy and making 
sketches from the pictures of the great masters. 

Returning to Edinburgh, Scott exhibited in the 
rooms of the Scottish Academy his picture of the 
' Taking Down from the Cross,' an altar-piece for a 
Roman Catholic chapel, which was engraved for 
circulation by the newly instituted Association for 

Trustees for the encouragement of the fisheries and manufactures 
of Scotland ; concluding, that the history of this grant exhibited 
the picture of a most healthy national progress, — the ruder arts 
connected with the necessaries of life first gaining strength, then 
education and science supervening and directing further exertions, 
and lastly, the arts that adorn life becoming longed for by a pros- 
perous and educated people. — Address by the Prince Consort^ Aug. 
30, 1850. 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 357 

the promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland. Year 
after year he exhibited works of an historical and His exe- 
poetic character, displaying imagination and origi- unequal. 
nality of thought with great though varying power 
of handling. 

Scott's pictures had more of sublimity than 
beauty, and were not always attractive to the 
general eye or suggestive of pleasing ideas. His 
last and most important work was ' Vasco di Gama 
doubling the Cape of Good Hope,' a composition 
full of life and incident, solidly painted, and creditable 
to the British school. This picture was purchased 
by subscription of friends, and placed in the hall 
of the Trinity House of Leith. His painting of the 
' Duke of Gloucester carried prisoner into Calais ' 
has been engraved on wood by Linton for the Art 
Union of London. Mr. Scott is known also by 
his designs of marked originality illustrating Cole- 
ridge's ' Ancient Mariner,' a subject especially suited 
to his pencil. 

A painter of genius and of high aims imperfectly 
realised, worn out by mental brooding over his art 
and the sickness of hope deferred, Scott's thin-spun 
life was cut short by premature decline, \vhen the 
merit of his efforts was beginning to be acknow- 
ledged, and his taste was improving by experience.-^ 

Although Haydon, Hilton, and Etty in his larger 
works are, in every sense of the word, entitled to 
rank as ' historical ' painters, it is impossible to shut 

1 A memoir of David Scott, of rather painful interest, contain- 
ing his Journal in Italy and papers on Art, was published at 
Edinburgh in 1850 by his brother, Mr. W. B. Scott, engraver. 



35^ VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

our eyes to the fact that, compared with its lofty 
Less am- attempts in the practice of West and Barry, British 

bitious ,..-..,., 1 

style of historical painting has in the present century gradu- 
hlsSrical ^^^Y taken up a less ambitious and more practical 
pamtmg. position. The spacious canvases and subjects of 
numerous figures have given way, for the most part, 
to pictures of a moderate or cabinet size and of 
fewer figures, while the subjects, historical or of his- 
torical^character, reflect more of human interest and 
life. Sir David Wilkie in his second or later manner. 
Sir Charles Eastlake, Sir William Allan, and one or 
two other Scotch painters, are examples of this less 
aspiring and more manageable kind of history painting. 
In the works of Messrs. Dyce and Maclise and their 
coadjutors in the decorative paintings for the Houses 
of Parliament a high species of art is again called 
into play, which will be immediately adverted to. 
Sir D. The later painting of Sir David Wilkie is of his- 

torical character.^ Even before the state of his 
1825. health obliged him to seek relaxation by travelling 
abroad, and for a time to give up painting, several 
of his pictures, as the ' Chelsea Pensioners,' ap- 
proached this character. After a year or two's 
residence in Italy and Spain, whether it was that 
his taste in art underwent a change from the con- 
templation of the works of the Italian masters and of 
the facile effective pictures of Velasquez, or whether 
the laboured execution and application required by 
his former mode of painting was too much for his 



^ The earlier painting and art of Wilkie is referred to in Chapter 
VII., * On Painting of Life and Manners.' 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 359 

nervous system, there Is no doubt of the fact that 
when he began to paint again, his style was altered 
both in the subjects selected and in the execution. 
His themes were of a more elevated and poetical 
kind, with fewer figures In the scene, less detail, and 
a lighter and more general treatment From Italy 
he painted the ' Princess . Doria washing the Pil- 
grims' feet ;' ' Napoleon and the Pope at Fontaln- 
bleau,' a picture of great force and expression ; and 
' Benvenuto Cellini and the Pope.' Spain supplied 
him with much that was Interesting, especially in 
connection with the War of Independence, — the 
' Guerilla taking leave of his Confessor,' the 
'Spanish Council of war,' the ' Defence of Sara- 
gossa.' The Spanish * Confessional ' will probably 
be thought superior to ' Columbus at the Convent' 

These paintings are simple In composition and of His later 
much expression, carefully studied, but executed ^^^^ ° 
with a more free and facile hand, and more brilliant 
in style than his early pictures. At the same time 
they cannot be said to stand so high In the depart- 
ment of historical painting as his earlier works do in 
the department of genre or painting of life and 
manners. In his later pictures of subjects from 
Scottish history the superior accuracy of recent 
years has discovered some defectiveness In costume. 
His celebrated picture of ' Knox Preaching' may be 
liable to criticism also from the strained action of 
the figure of the Scottish reformer, who is repre- 
sented as almost flying out of the pulpit 

If Sir David Wilkie's later art be put in the 
category of history painting, the reproach of want 



3^0 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK ill. 

of patronage to historic art cannot be alleged, all his 
Spanish and Italian pictures having been immedi- 
ately purchased by the King, or by private pur- 
chasers eager to obtain them. None of his later 
works were of greater interest or more run upon 
than the masterly pictures and sketches executed 
during his visit to the East prior to his death at sea 
(commemorated in Turner's picture) in 1841. 
Histori- The principal works of George Jones, R.A., were 

G. fones representations, more or less truthful, of historical 
battles, as Vittoria, Waterloo, Borodino, the Alma ; 
the principal figures, though small, being carefully 
studied and picturesquely grouped. His paintings 
were very effective in breadth of light and shade 
and colouring. 
Sir C. Another painter of historical genre appeared in Sir 

Eastlake. (^j^^j-j^g L_ Eastlake. After attending the schools 
of the Royal Academy, Eastlake went abroad in 
181 7 for upwards of twelve years, residing mostly in 
Italy, and visiting Sicily and Greece. Several pic- 
tures were sent by him from the continent for exhi- 
bition, one of these being ' Isidas the Spartan 
repelling the Thebans,' a more vigorous and spi- 
rited composition than some of the better known 
works of time. The picturesque peasantry of 
Calabria and the brigand life of Italy and Greece 
seem to have taken hold of the young painter's 
imagination, and he produced in succession a number 
of pictures and sketches, to an extent almost running 
into mannerism, of banditti, Italian peasants, and 
Greek fugitives. One of his most admired produc- 
tions was the picture of ' Pilgrims arriving in sight of 
Rome,' which has been engraved by G. T. Doo, R.A. 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 36 1 

Two of Eastlake's pictures, bought by Mr. Vernon 
and now in the National Gallery, ' Christ weeping His paint- 
over Jerusalem ' and the ' Escape of the Carrara ^^^' 
Family,' are examples of his manner, which was 
distinguished by refinement of taste and feeling 
rather than by great originality or strength ; while 
his colouring, though pure and refined, was gene- 
rally wanting in richness and effect. 

Mr. Eastlake was in 1841 named secretary to the 
Royal Commission for decorating the new Houses 
of Parliament ; and his labours in this department as 
well as in connexion with the National Gallery have 
been long before the public. After a re-organiza- 
tion of the management, he was appointed in 1855 Director 
Director of the National Gallery.^ He was elected JIq^j" 
fifth President of the Royal Academy on the death Gallery. 
of Sir Martin Shee. and was knighted. Sir Charles 
Eastlake was succeeded in the chair of the Academy 
on his decease in 1865 by the existing president Sir 
Francis Grant. The Royal Academy have since, 
by arrangement with Government, removed from 
Trafalgar Square and been put in possession of 
Burlington House, Piccadilly, for the purposes of 
their exhibitions and schools and custody of their 
works of art. 

^ This appointment was made for a term of five years, and was 
renewed at the end of that term. The principal feature in the 
new management was, that Parliament should vote an annual sum 
for the purchase of pictures for the National Gallery. In Mr. 
Wornum's Catalogue of the National Gallery^ British School (p. 37), 
a list is given of what the Keeper regards as ' the most notable ' of 
Sir Charles Eastlake's purchases for the Gallery and their prices. 
Sir Charles's contributions in various ways to the literature of art, 
and his learning in its processes, gained him much consideration. 



362 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iir. 

Supra, Subsequent to the paintings from Ossian of Alex- 

ander Runciman, the first noticeable attempt in his- 
toric painting in Scotland was by John Graham, who 
was master of the Trustees' Academy from 1 798 till 
his death in 181 7. An historical picture by him, 
the ' Disobedient Prophet,' is now in the Scottish 
National Gallery. From Graham Sir William Allan, 
1838. president of the Royal Scottish Academy, as well 
as several other painters afterwards eminent, had 
their earliest instruction in art. 
Sir w. Allan attended for a short time the classes of the 

Royal Academy. Finding little prospect of em- 
ployment at home, and being of an adventurous 
nature, he made his way to Petersburg. After 
pursuing his art for some -years with diligence 
and success, aided by the friendship of the court 
physician. Sir Alexander Crighton, he travelled into 
the interior of Russia and visited Tartary, Circassia, 
and Turkey. 

Having stored his sketch-book and travelling 
equipage with abundance of picturesque material, 
and witnessed various romantic incidents and situa- 
tions, Allan returned in 18 14 to Edinburgh and 
Interest- painted the ' Circassian Captives,' exhibited at 
jects^of' ^^'^^ Royal Academy, ' Polish Exiles conveyed by 
his pic- Cossacks to Siberia,' and other subjects of interest. 

tures. -J 

His pictures were lauded but not purchased ; till at 
last the picture of the ' Circassian Captives ' was 
disposed of by a raffle, while the ' Polish Exiles ' 
and another painting were bought by the Archduke 
(afterwards Emperor) Nicholas on his visit to this 
country in 18 19. 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 363 

Although Allan's pictures did not meet with that 
solid encouragement they may have deserved, his 
characteristic and expressive style created an interest 
with the public such as induced the painter to con- 
tinue his career ; varying his themes with subjects 
from Scottish history, as the ' Death of the Regent 
Murray,' and ' Mary Queen of Scots admonished by 
Knox.' A small picture of ' Tartars dividing Spoil ' 
was bought by Mr. Vernon. His portrait picture 
of ' Sir Walter Scott in his Study at Abbotsford ' 
has been recently purchased for the National Por- 
trait Gallery. Elected a Royal Academician in 1835, 
Mr. Allan succeeded Sir D. Wilkie as Her Majesty's 
Limner for Scotland, and being also president of the 
Scottish Academy, he received the honour of knight- 
hood. 

Sir William Allan held the appointment of master 
of the Trustees' School of Design in Edinburgh from 
1826 till within a few years of his death; and he 
materially contributed to create and cherish a zeal 
for art among his countrymen in Scotland and to 
sustain the influence and efforts of the northern 
Academy. He retained all his life something of his 
wandering habits, revisiting Russia and Greece and 
other parts of the continent. 

SirW. Allan's principal pictures, the best qualities Seen 
in which were firmness of handling, picturesque advan- 
character and expression, have been the subject of ^^^^ ^^\ 
engravings ; in which his art appears to greater ad- ings. 
vantage than in the paintings. He was no colourist, 
and in this respect his works are inferior to the 
productions of Thomas Duncan, whose decease at 



364 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book in. 

1845. a comparatively early age was a perceptible loss to 

art in Scotland. 
T. Dun- Educated at the Trustees' School under Sir 
tures of William Allan, Duncan exhibited historical and 
chara(>^ poetical subjects along with portraits, and becoming 
*^^- a member of the Royal Scottish Academy, he suc- 

ceeded Allan as professor of colour and drawing. 
He occasionally sent pictures to the Academy exhi- 
bitions in London which attracted attention, and 
1843. was elected an associate of that body. 

The principal exhibited pictures by Duncan were 
the * Entry of Prince Charles Edward into Edin- 
burgh after the Battle of Prestonpans,' and the 
' Prince taking Shelter in a Cave in the Highlands 
attended by Flora Macdonald,' both of which have 
been engraved. A cabinet picture of ' Anne Page 
and Slender ' is in the Scottish Gallery, and a slighter 
subject from the ballad of Robin Gray at South 
Kensington. His pictures are marked by purity 
and brilliancy of colour, good drawing and com- 
position. In the ' Entry of Prince Charles ' there is a 
discriminative appreciation of Scottish character, and 
great individuality displayed in the personages. 
R. s. Robert Scott Lauder, R.S.A., who succeeded 

Duncan as master of the Trustees' School, is 
entitled to fair consideration in connexion with 
Scottish art. His drawing was accurate, and his 
expression and colouring were improved by a so- 
journ of five years in Italy ; although in his paint- 
ings a greenish-grey tone of colour is too prevalent. 
Among the best of his works are his pictures of 
' Ruth ' and ' Christ teaching Humility.' 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 3^5 

This survey of historical painting cannot con- 
clude better than with a reference to the art of 
William Dyce and Daniel Maclise, whose recent 
performances have given additional lustre to the 
British school. 

The works of Mr. Dyce are unlike most other W. Dyce; 
painting of this school, and are distinguished by a ing to 
certain severity of style and leaning towards early ^^^ ^ ^^ * 
Italian art more perhaps than by original genius. 
The son of a physician of Aberdeen and a Master 
of Arts of Marischal College, Dyce sought his ele- 
mentary instruction In art in the academical schools 
of Edinburgh and London ; afterwards passing some 
years (with a short Interval during which he painted 
his first exhibition picture of ' Bacchus nursed by 1827. 
the Nymphs of Nyssa') in Italy, and principally at 
Rome. There he studied with intense sympathy 
the works of Raphael and his predecessors, and 
was regarded with what was possibly a fellow-feeling 
by Overbeck and the German Pre-Raphaelites who 
were then following out with great ardour their pecu- 
liar views In art.^ He also Initiated himself during 

1 Although not professedly belonging to the band of pre- 
Raphaelite painters who some years later associated themselves 
together in England, Mr. Dyce's painting predilections were evi- 
dently with them in several points of view- These painters pro- 
fessed to look more to the truthful spirit and practice evidenced 
in fne works of the early Italian masters than to imitate their 
manner; and it will hardly be denied that the uncompromising 
representation of nature by the English Pre-Raphaelites has exer- 
cised upon the whole a beneficial influence on British painting. 
But the Pre-Raphaelite phase of art is of so recent appearance, 
and the original dogmas of many of its living adherents have 
become so considerably modified in practice, that it is not thought 
necessary or advisable to refer to it more particularly in the text. 



366 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book in. 

his Stay at Rome in the fresco painting and decorative 
design of the ItaHans, in both which departments 
he subsequently gained much reputation at home. 
1829. Mr. Dyce, having returned from Italy, took up 

his residence in Edinburgh, and soon attracted at- 
tention by the works he contributed to the exhl- 
His pic- bitlons. These at first showed great versatility of 
Edin- talent, consisting of portraits, chiefly of ladies and 
burgh. children, landscape compositions and poetical sub- 
jects. In the Scottish National Gallery are three 
of his pictures of this time, an * Infant Hercules 
strangling the Serpents,' a small painting of good 
colour, also a full length portrait of Dr. James 
Hamilton of Edinburgh, and ' Paolo and Francesca,* 
a large composition of much Interest and feeling, 
purely and delicately painted, — the figures life-size, 
but that of Paolo being defective in vigour and 
expression. 

Early in 1837 Dyce was appointed master of the 
Trustees School of Design at Edinburgh. While 
holding this situation he published (In conjunction 
His views with Mr. C. H. Wilson) a pamphlet on the manage- 
schools of ment of schools of design, and with suggestions for 
adopted ^^^ Improvement of the Edinburgh school.^ This 
pamphlet contained the most complete scheme of 
art-education hitherto promulgated, and was the 
1838. main cause of Mr. Dyce's appointment to be secre- 
tary and director of the schools just opened In 
London at Somerset House ; soon after which he 

1 The pamphlet was in the form of a Letter to Lord Meadow- 
bank^ and bore the signatures of both Dyce and Wilson. 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING, 367 

was sent to visit and report upon schools of a 
similar character in France and Germany. The 
result of this continental enquiry was a valuable 
Report which led to the re-modelling of the British 
schools of design in conformity with Mr. Dyce's 
views. 

Continuing to exhibit in the exhibitions of the Dyce's 
Academy, Dyce found his time too much encroached paintings 
upon by the schools of design, while his salary as ^^ °^^- 
director was inadequate, and he resigned in 1843 the 
appointments he held in connexion with the schools. 
Among the most noteworthy of his productions in 
oil-colours were ' King Joash shooting the Arrow 
of Deliverance,' ' Jacob and Rachael ; ' of a later 
time 'Titian's first Essay in Colouring' and 'St. John 
leading home the Virgin ; ' all of these being true 
versions of the learned manner of the early Italian 
painting, characterised by correct drawing and v/ell 
defined positive colouring, with much power of ex- r.a. 
pression and delicacy of handling. ^ ^ : 

The latter years of Mr. Dyce's life were devoted in fresco. 
almost entirely to historical painting in fresco, a 
branch of art with which the painters of this country 
w-ere very little acquainted. He was skilled in the 
technical process of fresco and in the kind of sub- 
jects that suited it. The series of fresco-paintings 
decorating the east end of All Saints Church, Mar- 
garet Street, London, are examples of his work in 
this department. He painted also in fresco for her 
Majesty and the late Prince Consort (who sym- 
pathised with his taste for the early style of art) 
a subject from ' Comus ' on one of the compart- 



368 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

ments of the Summer-house at Buckingham Palace, 
and a composition at Osborne of ' Neptune giving 
the Empire of the Sea to Britannia.' Of the small 
frescoes from * Comus ' in the Summer-house by 
eight different artists, that of Dyce appears to be 
most in the manner of fresco-painting, and is also in 
the best state of preservation. 

Dyce's principal works in fresco were in connexion 
tion of with the decoration of the new Houses of Par- 
of ParHa- li^i^^^^t. A royal commission appointed in 1841 and 
ment. consisting of twenty-one members, with the Prince 
Albert as president and Sir Charles Eastlake secre- 
tary, had been directed to enquire and report 
whether advantage might not be taken of the re- 
building of the Palace of Westminster for the 
purpose of encouraging and promoting the Fine 
Arts in the United Kingdom, and in what manner 
an object of so much importance would be most 
effectually promoted. 

The proceedings of this commission it is un- 
necessary to detail. The commissioners were favour- 
able to the method of fresco for wall-painting in 
the new palace, and after feeling their way by various 
competitive trials and by exhibitions of cartoons and 
specimens of fresco-painting, they proposed in their 
report of 1847 a scheme for the decoration of the 
whole interior building. Certain artists, of whom 
the chief were Messrs. Dyce, Maclise, Herbert, 
Cope, and Ward, were selected to proceed with the 
paintings. The subjects of the pictures were chosen 
by a small committee of three members of the com- 
mission, Lords Stanhope and Macaulay and Mr. H. 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 369 

Hallam, whose choice of subjects was afterwards 
approved of by the commissioners. 

The earhest executed of the frescoes was the Frescoes 
' Baptism of Ethelbert the first Christian King of 
Britain,' by Mr. Dyce, in the central compartment 
over the throne in the House of Lords. With the 
style and execution of this fresco the commissioners 
expressed themselves entirely satisfied. Dyce then 
undertook to paint in fresco seven wall compart- 
ments in the Royal Robing-room, to be completed in 
seven years from July, 1848. In the performance 
of this work some difficulties and delays occurred, 
and on his death in 1864 five only of the seven 
pictures w^ere painted.^ The subjects are from the 
Legend of King Arthur (in Sir Thomas Mallory's 
* Mort d'Arthure '), and were meant to exemplify , 
virtues characteristic of chivalry — Hospitality, Faith, 
Courtesy, Generosity, Mercy. These frescoes are 
regarded as amongst the best examples of this kind 
of painting ; and the partial decay that had com- 
menced in one or two of the colours has been 
arrested by a chemical application, which it is hoped 
may be instrumental in preserving them for a long 
period. Mr. Dyce always adhered to the Italian 
method of fresco-painting, which it will be presently 



1 GuUick's Handbook for the Pictures in the Houses of Parlia- 
ment, London, 1866, p. 13. The causes of delay were exjDlained 
by Mr. Dyce in a letter to the Times in 1863. He had received 
pre-payment of the contract sum for the seven pictures, and he 
offered in this letter to repay into the Exchequer whatever sum he 
might be thought not to have duly earned, until the works should 
be completed. Government did not avail itself of this offer. 

B B 



370 VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iii. 

seen was modified in the practice of Maclise by the 
adoption of the water-glass process. 

Another work by Dyce, of great merit and care- 
fully executed was the coloured cartoon of St. Paul 
and St. Barnabas preaching at Antioch, for the 

1856. window of St. Paul's church at Alnwick. 

Daniel Maclise, R.A., a native of Ireland, ex- 
hibited an earl}^ picture in water-colours in London 

1829. from the 'Twelfth Night' of Shakespeare. He 
did not avail himself of the privilege of travelling 
Art-work in Italy which the Royal Academy's gold medal, 
Maclise. obtained for an historical composition of the ' Choice 
of Hercules,' carried with it, but (with the exception 
of a visit to Paris) wrought steadily at home, ground- 
ing his style w^ith portrait-painting. His picture in 
oils of ' Mokanna unveiling his Features to Zelica,' 
exhibited at the British Institution in 1833, and 
* All- Hallow Eve' at the Royal Academy in the 
same year, made him favourably known. 

Mr. Maclise's oil-pictures of subsequent years 
fully maintained his early prestige, and gained for 
him the reputation of a painter of sterling genius 
and ability and thorough originality. Amongst his 
exhibited pictures were especially remarked the 
' Installation of Captain Rock,' the ' Chivalrous Vow 
of the Ladies and the Peacock,' ' Robin Hood and 

R.A. King Richard,' ' Merry Christmas in the Baron's 
Hall' These were followed by the ' Banquet-scene 
in Macbeth,' the ' Sleeping Beauty,' the ' Pla3'^-scene 
in Hamlet ' (now in the National Gallery), the 
' Ordeal by Touch,' and ' Caxton's Printing-office.' 
His smaller cabinet-sized pictures of a humorous 



[838. 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. 371 

kind from Shakespeare, the Vicar of Wakefield and 
Gil Bias, were particularly attractive. 

Maclise's pictures display an exuberant fertility of His style. 
imagination and richness of design, and tell their 
story with intelligence and expression. His person- 
ages have occasionally an air of the stage, which is 
more observable in such a subject as ' Salvator Rosa 
showing his Picture to a Dealer' than in proper 
subjects of the theatre, where it may be looked for. 
His drawing is firm and the detail of his design 
made out with hard and unerring accuracy. His 
colouring, though well defined, has too much of a 
sallow or metallic hue, causing regret that he had 
not applied himself more in early life to study the 
Venetian colourists. 

Maclise was one of the first artists engaged to ^vvall- 
prepare designs for the fresco-paintings proposed Pointing 
for decorating: the new Palace of Westminster ; the Houses 

of Pa.r- 

two subjects allotted to him (in the House of Lords) liament. 
being the Spirit or personification of Chivalry and 
the Spirit of Justice. These designs (each of them 
a majestic female figure surrounded by characteristic 
groups) Mr. Maclise painted in fresco on two of the 
spaces within the arches behind the Strangers' Gal- 
lery, which, being rather dark and recessed, are 
less favourable for paintings than the corresponding 
spaces over the throne. 

The symptoms of decay which in no long time 
became more or less visible in these as well as in 
the other Westminster frescoes seemed to sanction 
the conclusion, that fresco-painting, or at all events 

B B 2 



Zl'^ 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 



Method 
of stereo- 
chrome 
adopted. 



certain colours used (but perhaps not indispensable) 
in fresco-painting, would not be suitable for a humid 
climate or an atmosphere often charged with gaseous 
and impure exhalations. It was subject to another 
inconvenience, from the piecemeal mode of working 
required in the painting of large frescoes by the 
usual Italian method, according to which the plas- 
tering and painting proceed day by day together. 

In consequence of these disadvantages, to which 
fresco-painting according to the mode in general use 
was liable in this country, the method of stereo- 
chrome or water-glass painting came to be adopted 
for wall-painting by Mr. Maclise and the other 
Westminster painters, with the exception of Dyce.^ 
In the practice of this method a ground almost 
identical with that for fresco is used, and the pre- 
paration of the wall may be completed before the 
picture is commenced. The colours are applied 
with no other medium or vehicle than pure distilled 
water, and the result is a water- colour painting, 
which is fixed by silicate of potass or soda in a 
liquid state (water-glass) being sprinkled on it 
through a syringe having minute holes. By this, 



^ Maclise had already made designs for a portion of his great 
picture of Wellington and Blucher in the Royal Gallery of the 
Palace of Westminster, when he became so sensible of the dis- 
advantages of the process, especially for large designs full of detail, 
that he proceeded in the autumn of 1859 to Germany, to inform 
himself of the nature and merits of the new method of water- 
glass painting as adopted by Kaulbach of Berlin and other artists. 
He returned with the conviction of its being the preferable mode 
of wall-painting in this climate ; and he then painted the whole 
picture according to the stereochrome method. 



CHAP. VI.] HISTORICAL PAINTING. Zl ?i 

when dry and crystallised, the colours are fixed on 
the wall with a thin coating, as it were, of glass. ^ 

The large pictures painted by Mr. Maclise ac- His wall- 
cording to this method In the central compartments of Wel- 
of the Royal Gallery in the Palace of Westminster Ij^f °'' 
may be regarded as his masterpieces. In these ^lucher, 
paintings, the subjects of which are the ' Meet- Death of 
ing of Wellington and Blucher after the Battle of 
Waterloo' and the 'Death of Nelson,' the most 
masterly grouping and expression are displayed, and 
striking incidents and situations depicted on a large 
scale, and in a truly grand and unaftected style. 
The great width of the Wellington picture, the num- 
ber of life-size figures, the horses, fore-shortening, 
and whole detail of the execution, render it altogether 
a remarkable work of art. Equally worthy of note 
for its pictorial qualities and truthfulness of detail 
is the companion picture of the ' Death of Nelson 
on the deck of the Victory,' which is painted likewise 
according to the stereochrome method.^ 



^ Pamphlet by Dr. J. von Fuchs on Stereochrome Paintings 
ti-anslated in \ki^ Journal of the Society of Arts ; Art Journal^ 1861, 
p. 328. 

2 The cartoon for the Wellington and Blucher picture (which 
is 40 feet in width by 12 in height) was begun in 1857, and the 
painting on the wall completed in 1861. It may be observed that 
on this picture there appears a sort of haze or bloom, arising, it is 
believed, from a slight excess in the amount of water-glass applied. 
From this partial defect, caused by want of experience in the use 
of the stereochrome method, the other picture of the Death of 
Nelson is entirely free. 



374 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iii. 



CHAPTER VII. 

LIFE AND MANNERS PAINTING. 

Original painting of Sir David Wilkie — Of Miih'eady 
— Painting of subjects fro7n popular authors — Newton 
— Leslie — Egg — Life a?id manners painti7ig — Mil Her — 
John Phillip. 

Pictures of life and manners, whether original in 
subject or taken from novels and poems, have be- 
come of late years a very popular department of 
British art. Hogarth's painting was of this class, 
for the most part original in subject and in a style 
entirely his own. 

Hogarth's mahl-stick came into the possession of 
Sir George Beaumont, who resolved to keep it till a 
painter should appear worthy to receive it ; and he 
kept it till he saw the ' Village Politicians ' of V^ilkie.^ 
Without the powerful imagination and depth of 
meaning of Hogarth, Wilkie's early pictures have a 
good deal of his dramatic effect and characteristic 
representation of nature. But while both studying 
closely human nature and character, their sources of 
inspiration and the constitution of their minds, and 
consequently their productions, materially differed. 

David Wilkie, the son of a Scotch clergyman in 
the county of Fife, with four years' teaching at the 

^ Leslie's Handbook for Painters^ p. 146. 



CHAP. VII.] LIFE AND MANNERS PAINTING. 375 

Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh under Graham, Early art 
had in 1803 become as much a proficient In his art 
as that school could make him. The Influence of 
David Allan, a Scotch painter and designer of 
domestic subjects of rural life, and who had taught 
in the Trustees' School in the interval between 
Runciman and Graham, was still felt In the scene of 
his former practice ; ^ and when Wilkie first began 
to look at nature for himself as a painter, his 
manner of doing so is traced in a considerable de- 
gree to the w^orks of Allan as well as to pictures or 
prints of the Dutch school that came in his way. 
Painting occasionally portraits of friends and neigh- 
bours, he was ahvays on the out-look for character, 
frequenting fairs and market-places where country 
people assembled to bargain about and dispose of 
their various commodities.^ 

The materials for Wilkie's first work of art, 
* Pitlessie Fair,' were drawn from such sources, aided 
by sketches of ' queer faces ' which the young 
painter had made in his father's kirk.^ This picture 
is full of subject and of humorous groups ; rather 
crude In colour, but solidly executed. 

^ This original though irregular artist studied for some time in 
Italy. His designs illustrating the ' Gentle Shepherd ' of Ramsay 
display his peculiar talent for conveying character and expression. 

2 Life of Sir David Wilkie.^ by Allan Cunningham (3 vols. 
1843),!. 37. 

^ An engraving from a picture by Teniers, entitled ' Rejouis- 
sances Flamandes,' has some features in common with ' Pitlessie 
Fair,' which is still in excellent preservation and in possession 
of the family of the Fifeshire proprietor (C. Kinnear, Esq.) who 
bought it of the painter. 



37^ VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book III. 

Unlike some young painters of promise who in 
more recent years have tried their wings in Scot- 
land before having recourse to a wider held, Wilkie 
decided very soon to proceed at once to London, 
where at that time there was more scope for the 
exercise of his talents. The year 1805 saw him a 
student at the classes of the Royal Academy along 
with Jackson and Haydon, and in the following year 
his ' Village Politicians ' (painted for the ' Earl of 
Mansfield) was exhibited at the Academy. Tho- 
roughly national, and chiming in with the feeling of 
the time, It came home to all classes of spectators ; 
there being nothing of that day to compare with it 
in dramatic effect and unity of action and in the 
force and expression of the heads. In the following 
years appeared the ' Blind Fiddler ' painted for Sir 
George Beaumont, the ' Rent-day ' (for Lord Mul- 
grave), and the ' Village Festival ' (for Mr. Anger- 
stein). The ' Card-players,' ' Alfred in the Neat- 
herd's Cottage,' and the ' Wardrobe ransacked,' were 
of the same time but of inferior merit. 
His Wilkie undoubtedly admired the depth and rich- 

cfass^ed^ ness of tone of the Dutch painters ; and his painting 
with the q|- ^]^jg period appears to have been classed with that 
school. of the Dutch school. Sir Martin Shee, in his 
' Elements of Art,' talks of 'a Tenlers or a Wilkie ;' 
adding in a note, that ' it is hardly doing Mr. Wilkie 
justice to class him altogether with the Dutch school, 
for though he shoots with the same bow his aim is 
evidently higher. In character he is their equal, in 
expression their superior; he produces as much 



CHAP. VII.] LIFE AND MANNERS PAINTING. Zll 

truth with more selection, has more refinement of 
thought, more propriety of circumstance, and more 
sentiment in situation.'^ 

Mr. Wilkie was elected a Royal Academician in 
1811. Some years prior to the change that took 
place in his style after he went abroad, he had 1825. 
been gradually adopting a less laboured manner of 
execution ; and his pictures of this middle period Pictures 
are thought by many to be his best productions, middle 
combining the individual character and expression ^^^^^ 
found in his earlier works with a more free touch and 
richer tone of colouring. At the same time it is but 
too evident that several of these pictures have been 
more or less injured by time and varnish. ' Blind- 
man's Buff' and the ' Penny Wedding' (in the Royal 
collection), the ' Letter of Introduction,' ' Duncan 
Gray,' the ' Chelsea Pensioners,' the ' Parish Beadle,' 1822-3. 
and the ' Reading of the Will ' (at Munich), belong 
to this period. 

Sir David Wilkie was fortunate in having his 
earlier pictures so well rendered in engravings by 
the skill of Burnet, Raimbach, and James Stev^^art. 
His best works are indeed of a kind of which the 
leading qualities can be fairly conveyed by the 
graver ; differing in this respect from pictures whose 
merit consists chiefly in the execution, and from 



1 Elements of Art, p. 27. The superiority here claimed for 
Wilkie by Sir Martin Shee over the Dutch painters does not 
extend to colour, or Lo the durability of his colouring. The 
vehicles and glazes he came to use were certainly not of that safe 
and standing description used by the Dutch artists. 



37^ VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iii. 

landscape pictures which depend so much on 
colouring/ Wilkie's later painting of an historical 
character is referred to in the previous chapter. 
William The works of William Mulready, an Irishman by 
ready. birth and a pupil of the Royal Academy, may be set 
down as belonging to the same class of art as the 
pictures of Wilkie's first manner; but when com- 
pared together, the works of these painters do not 
seem to have much in common, being respectively 
distinguished by qualities peculiar to each. 

Mulready 's first pictures of any note were land- 
scapes and interiors of limited subject and dimen- 
sions — old houses in Lambeth, views of Kensington 
gravel pits, carpenters' shops. Studying, though 
not copying, the subjects and minute finish of the 
Dutch painters, he very soon betook himself to those 
scenes and incidents of domestic life and manners 
that form the staple of his productions. His 
pictures of the ' Idle Boys punished,' the ' Fight 
interrupted,' and one or two others, gained for him 
in 1816 the highest academical honours. 
A tho- Mr. Mulready's zeal in the study and practice of 

rough 

draughts- his art was unrelaxing, and his drawing in the life 
school, as his years advanced, was never given up. 
His drawings in red and black chalk of 'Women 
bathing,' and similar subjects, are careful and ad- 



^ The prints from Wilkie's early pictures were much sought 
after on the continent. Mr. C. R. Leslie, when at Paris in 18 17, 
found their reputation to stand very high in France. ' I like your 
Vilkes, but I do not like your Vest,^ was the observation of a 
Frenchman at that time to Mr. Leslie. — Autohiogi'aphical Recol- 
lections, i. 42. 



CHAP. VII.] LIFE AND MANNERS PAINTING. 379 

mirable Academy studies, and deserving the respect 
they are held in at South Kensington.^ 

Among Mulready's oil pictures, the ' Wolf and the His do- 
Lamb,' ' Lending a Bite,' ' Choosing the Wedding- subjects. 
gown,' ' Train up a Child in the way he should go,' 
are distinguished by the qualities he excelled in — 
accurate drawing, good colour and finish, and a 
certain refinement in the representation of common 
incidents and of boy-life.^ 

While recognising the merit in these respects of Estimate 

Tv/r 1 1 > • • • • of his 

Mulready s pictures, it is not so easy to concur m painting, 
the very exalted estimate which enthusiastic admirers 
make of his works. His colouring, in some pictures 
harmonious, rich and delicate, tends in other pictures, 
as the ' Whistonian Controversy ' and ' Crossing the 
Ford,' to an unpleasant tone of redness. And if the 
best art be that which adds mind to form, there 
appears in almost all his original works a very 
limited degree of invention and imagination. In the 
' Convalescent from Waterloo,' for instance, the 
subject is tamiely represented, and in his pictures of 
big boys gobbling cherries and apples, in ' The Last 
in,' and so forth, the humour is shallow ; while in 
his ' Vicar of Wakefield ' pictures, as the ' Whis- 
tonian Controversy ' and ' Choosing the Wedding- 
gown,' however good the execution, there appears a 
want of fancy and of marked character. But after 
these deductions from the high estimate sometimes 

1 One of his largest finished drawings of this class, and one of 
the finest works of its kind, is in the Scottish National Gallery. 

2 In Stephens' elegant little book upon T^Iulready some of his 
principal pictures are given in photograph. 



3^0 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK III. 

formed of Mulready, enough remains to make him 
be remembered as a great master of design and 
composition and (when not too warm) of colour. 

The larger proportion of the pictures of Wilkie 
and Mulready were original subjects. The art of 
their principal contemporaries in the department of 
lllustra- life and manners-painting sought subjects for the 
tures most part in the works of popular and standard 
popular authors ; a species of painting which began now to 
writers, j^^ more elaborated, and more highly considered and 
valued than when it had been practised chiefly with 
a view to book-illustration. The works of Cer- 
vantes, Mollere, Le Sage, Gay, Swift, Goldsmith, 
Sterne and Sir Walter Scott, the comedies of 
Shakespeare (subjects from his tragic plays being 
usually ranked as historical), were laid under contri- 
bution for this purpose, and have afforded subjects 
for many agreeable and pleasing pictures. 

Of this sort were nearly all the pictures of Gilbert 

G. S. Stuart Newton. American by birth, Newton came 

to Europe in 1817, and after passing some time in 

Italy and France, attended the schools of the Royal 

Academy in London. Fond of society, amusing 

and of agreeable manners, he very soon devoted 

himself to that class of pictures most congenial to 

his disposition and talents, and exhibited at Somerset 

His sub- House a succession of pictures pleasing in subject 

colour- and beautiful in colour. His ' Captain Macheath 

^"^' with Polly and Lucy ' was purchased by the Marquis 

of Lansdowne, and ' The Prince of Spain's Visit to 

Catalina ' (from Gil Bas) by the Duke of Bedford, 

while Mr. Labouchere bought his ' Shylock and 



CHAP. VII.] LIFE AND MANNERS PAINTING. 381 

Jessica ' and Mr. Vernon ' Yorick and the Grisette.' ^ 
One picture at least of a more elevated character, 
graceful in composition and design, and fine in 
colour, Newton painted from Shakespeare — ' Lear 
attended by Cordelia and the Physician,' in the pos- 
session of Lady Ashburton. 

Mr. Newton was in due time elected a Royal 1832. 
Academician ; an honour he did not lone survive to 
enjoy, his death (which was preceded by aberration 
of mind) occurring three years after. His pictures, 
all cabinet size and not numerous, are distinguished 
by gracefulness and good taste as well as by great 
power of drawing and execution. They are delicately 
and carefully painted, though not highly elaborated, 
and in distribution of light and shade, richness and 
harmony of colour, they are probably not inferior to 
any easel work of the present century. 

The memory of Newton is associated vvith that 
of his friends Washington Irving and the painter 
Charles Robert Leslie. The works by which Leslie 
is most favourably known belong to the same class 
as those of Newton, though from his longer applica- 
tion to painting they are more numerous and better 
known. 

An American of Philadelphia by parentage and Leslie's 
education, though actually born in England, Leslie ^^ 

entered himself at the schools of the Royal Academy, 18 13. 
where he had the advantage, under Fuseli, of learn- 
ing rather than being taught his art.^ Casting about 

^ Biographical Sketch of G. S. Nauton, by J. Dafforne, Art 
Jour? ml, 1864, p. 13. 

2 Leslie's Autobiographical Recollections, edited by Mr. T. 
Taylor, i. 37. 



3^2 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK III. 

what style to adopt, he commenced with portraits, 
which he practised to some extent all his life, and 
(under the guidance of West and Alston) essayed 
history In one or two pieces, such as ' Saul and the 
Witch of Endor.' The bent of his disposition, how- 
ever, Inclined him to subjects of an amiable, playful, 
and humorous kind. 
Mostly One of the first pictures that made him a repu- 

tive, tatlon was * Sir Roger de Coverley going to Church.' 

His next considerable picture was * May-day in the 
time of Queen Elizabeth,' the two central figures in 
which appear an exact repetition of Ann Page and 
Master Slender, as depicted in a small early picture 
by himself of that name.-^ ' Sancho Panza and the 
Duchess' was painted for the artist's patron and 
friend Lord Egremont ; a replica of which, done for 
Mr. Vernon, is now In the National Collection. Mr. 
1826. Leslie, after becoming R.A., continued for a number 
of years to contribute to the Academy exhibitions a 
succession of pictures from the poets and novelists, 
which have deservedly placed him high in this 
department of painting. The pictures of the last 
1856. three or four years preceding his death fell off both 
in conception and execution. 

Full of dramatic effect, quaint humour, and refined 
drollery, showing also a nice discrimination, not only 
of character but of the varieties of social position, 



pleasing yi^ Leslie's pictures soon became popular. The 



Their 
pleasii 
cha- 
racter, attention was captivated by their agreeable de- 

^ Biographical Sketch of Leslie, with illustrations, in the Art 
Joiniial, 1856, p. 105. 



m 
execu- 
tion. 



CHAP. VII.] LIFE AND MANNERS PAINTING. 3^3 

llneations of scenes and persons familiar in every- 
day reading. They are always conceived and 
painted with a feeling of what is right and true, not 
merely with reference to the particular scene repre- 
sented, but to human life generally. In scenes of 
broad humour Leslie may be thought too much under 
restraint, as in his representations of Falstaff. As 
long as the humour is chiefly in the sentiment, as 
in ' Uncle Toby and Widow Wadman,' where the 
personages have a perfectly serious air, the effect is 
irresistibly comic.^ 

Mr. Leslie appears to have been of a refined and ^loi'^ 

, . . r • • tasteful 

impressible rather than original cast of mmd. His in man- 
execution and colouring was favourably influenced in great 
the first part of his career by that of his friend New- 
ton,^ and not so favourably for his sort of subjects by 
the painting of Mr. Constable the landscape-painter, 
with whom he was intimate in his later life. Leslie's 
pictures are not unfrequently defective in richness 
and mellowness of tone.^ In point of general 

^ Washington Irving, writing in 1826, makes the following just 
observation on Leslie's and Newton's pictures from Do7i Quixote 
and Gil Bias : ' I regret continually, now that you and Newton 
are engaged in painting Spanish subjects, that you could not get 
a peep at the country and its people. There is a character about 
them that it is not easy to gather from mere description.' — Auto- 
biographical Recollections, ii. 180. 

2 This influence of Newton is fully recognised by the editor of 
the Autodiographicdl Recollections (Introduction, p. 23). In a 
letter to Mr. Washington Irving in 182 1, Leslie says of a copy he 
had made from a Paul Veronese at the British Institution, — 
* Newton has improved my sketch of Paul Veronese Avonderfully ; 
it is now invaluable to me as a study of colouring.' 

^ In an exhibition of pictures of deceased masters at the 



384 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iii. 

character and expression, in composition and taste, 
their merit is greater. 
Painting The pictures of life and manners, combined with 
Miilier. landscape, of William Muller will always be re- 
garded with interest by those who have seen or 
possess them. The son of a German who was 
curator of the Bristol Museum, his education was 
desultory. He passed a considerable portion of his 
life in European and Eastern travel, occupying him- 
self with sketching and painting. With such occu- 
pation in view, he accompanied the government 
expedition to Lycia in 1843, and the result of his 
travels was seen in the various admirable pictures 
he exhibited at the Royal Academy and British 
Institution of groups of figures and scenery. 
1845. In the year of his death two of Mtiller's exhibited 

subjects were ' Cingaris playing in a tent to a Xan- 
thian Family ' and ' Turkish Merchants with cam.els 
passing the river in the Vale of Xanthus.' ^ The 
^ ' Slave Market,' a picture warm and rich in colour- 
ing, attributed to this painter, was exhibited at 
Burlington House in the spring of 1871. 

The merit of Miiller's performances, in respect of 
originality and breadth of handling, brilliancy and 



rooms in Burlington House in the spring of 1870, thirty works by 
LesUe were brought together on the walls of two of the rooms ; 
pictures amusing and interesting from their subjects, but when 
seen along with the pictures by the old masters in the other 
rooms wanting in depth and richness of colour, 

1 Art Journal^ 1850, p. 344; Wornum's Catalogue of the 
National Gallery^ British School. Mr. Miiller's work, entitled 
Ficturesqnc Sketches of the Age of Francis F., was published in 1841. 



CHAP. VII.] LIFE AND MANNERS PAINTING, 385 

beauty of colouring, seems to have been more appre- His col- 
clated by the ' lay element ' than by the Royal and ^ 
Academy, who are said to have done him scant of ^^^^^d- 
justice in the hanging of his pictures, and altogether ^^^S- 
omitted adding their capital letters to his name. 

The later pictures of William Simson, R.S.A., 
who painted both in Edinburgh and London, Died 
were mostly subjects of domestic picturesque life. ^ 
With a good eye for colour, he treated subjects 
of this kind with much spirit and truth to nature, 
though landscape was usually considered to be his 
forte. 

The works of Augustus Leopold Egg, who died Works of 
at Algiers in 1863, were at first chiefly subjects from Egg. 
Le Sage and the novelists, but were afterwards of a 
more original character. Educated at the classes of 
the Royal Academy, he usually exhibited in Lon- 1838. 
don. Among his earlier pictures w^ere ' Gil Bias ex- 
changing rings with Camilla,' a ' Scene from the 
Diable Boiteux,' ' Peter the Great and Catherine,' 
and ' Mr. Pepys's Introduction to Nell Gwynn.'^ 

Mr. Egg after this adopted a very sensational Sensa- 
manner of painting, by giving contrasted scenes in sul^ects, 
the life of the same individual — a factitious mode of u°^^^^ 

best art. 

exciting emotion very easily imitated. Such were 
his pictures of the ' Life and Death of Buckingham ' 
and a triptych representing in compartments three 
incidents supposed to arise from a wife's infidelity. 
These subjects, of painful character, found no pur- 
chasers, and latterly the painter reverted to more 

^ Art Journal^ 1863, p. 87. 
C C 



386 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book III. 

R. A. commonplace themes, his last exhibited picture being 
a scene from ' Catherine and Petruchio.' 

Mr. Egg's execution was good and his colouring 
pure and harmonious ; and in subjects the choice of 
which was dictated by his better judgment, his 
appreciation and delineation of character was just 
and well marked. 

The death of John Phillip in 1867 caused a blank 

in his branch of art not easily to be filled up. A 

J. Phillip, native of Aberdeen, Phillip was for a time in the 

studio of a portrait-painter in that city (Mr. James 

1832. Forbes). After a hurried visit to London, where 
his imagination was kindled by some of Wilkie's 
pictures and by the Royal Academy exhibition, he 
painted on his return to Aberdeen some pictures in 
the style of Wilkie, and also several portaits which 
attracted attention. 

With the assistance of William lord Panmure (to 
whom, through Major Pryse Gordon, Phillip was 
recommended) the young artist was admitted a 
student of the Royal Academy, where he acquired 
the requisite technical training. He continued for a 
time to paint portraits in London. In 1846 he 
began to exhibit at the Royal Academy subjects 
chiefly of Scottish life and manners ; while for some 
years he sketched and designed and also painted 
occasionally in Scotland, 'exhibiting the finished 
pictures in London.^ Amongst these were ' Presby- 
terian Catechising,' ' Drawing for the Militia,' and 
the ' Spae-wife.' 

^ Drummond's Catalogue of the Scottish National Gallery. 



CHAP. VII.] LIFE AND MANNERS PAINTING, 2!^1 

The subjects and costume of Mr. Phillip's art 
rather than its character underwent a change by a 
visit of some years to Spain. Without attempting His 
history, like Sir David Wilkie in similar circum- pictures. 
stances, he studied the individual life and manners 
of the peasantry of Spain, by far the most cha- 
racteristic inhabitants of the Peninsula. He re- 
mained for some time at Seville, and also travelled 
in the interior of the country with a guide, in order 
to sketch whatever interested his fancy in that land 
of picturesque idlers, coquettes, priests, and gypsies. 
The results of his Spanish studies during his first 
and subsequent visits appeared In a succession of 
pictures of much Interest, remarkable for their 
originality of treatment, characteristic expression, 
and force of colour. Such were ' Life among the 1853. 
Gypsies of Seville,' ' A Letter-writer of Seville,' 
and the 'Spanish Sisters' (In Her Majesty's collec- 
tion), and ' Spanish Contrabandlstas.' 

Mr. Phillip's picture of ' The Huff' (or Quarrel) 1859. 
was followed by his election into the Royal Academy, 
and he was soon after commissioned to paint the 
' Marriage of the Princess Royal ' and the ' House 
of Commons,' two of that difficult class of portrait 
pictures in which to succeed even tolerably well was 
an achievement. 

Phillip's pictures may be regarded as distinguished 
by facile and effective handling rather than by elabo- 
rate finish. No figure painter of the British school 
of recent years (except Mr. Mlllals) has approached 
him In vigour of execution and picturesqueness com- 
bined. The latest of his productions marked him as 

c c 2 



2,SS VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book III. 

Char- Still advancing in imaginative power as well as in 
of his precision of touch and brilliancy of colouring. In 
painting j^-^ ' 5panish Wake, or Gloria' the sentiment is of a 
strange and almost appalling character ; the corpse 
of a dead infant being laid out with flowers and lights 
(according to a custom of the country), while a merry 
party are engaged in celebrating, with music and 
dance, its passage to another state of existence. An 
unfinished picture of ' Spanish Boys playing at Bull- 
fighting,' now in the Scottish National Gallery, is an 
admirable example, so far as it goes, of Mr. Phillip's 
style, and also of his mode of working. 



CHAP. viiL] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 3^9 



CHAPTER VIIL 

BRITISH LANDSCAPE-PAINTING IN THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

The Art work of Constable and TiLrner — of Collins — 
Boningto7t — Sir W. Callcott — Productions of Martin and 
Danby — of the Scottish school of landscape — the Nas- 
myths — Thomson of Dnddingstone — Macctdloch — Paint- 
ing of Roberts aiid Stanfield. 

Analogies are sometimes discovered between poetry 
and painting. Borrowing terms the one from the 
other, poetry is said to paint and painting to de- 
scribe. The descriptions by the painter are certainly 
restricted to a moment of time, but all that can be 
seen in a moment, which may be much, the painter 
fixes on his canvas. 

In none of their phases do poetry and painting Analogy 
seem to approach each other so nearly as in de- ^escrip^ 
scriptive poetry and landscape-painting. Some ^^^^ 
writers describing scenery and objects in verse give and land- 
a literal transcript of what they see in nature, as painting, 
woods, houses, water, country occupations ; ' bab- 
bling,' like Falstaff, 'of green fields.' In the same 
way many painters mechanically transfer to board or 
canvas what they call natural objects and scenery, 
and paint landscapes, perhaps well enough executed 
and with a resemblance to what is meant to be 
represented, but failing to affect the imagination or 
the feelings. 



390 V/BIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iii. 

Other writers again of descriptive poetry, such as 
Wordsworth, Burns, Byron and Scott, mingle senti- 
ment and human interest in their descriptions of 
scenery and places, and thus multiply immeasurably 
the reader's sources of gratification. And so it is 
with those great landscape-painters, few and far 
between, who bring the powers of association and 
sentiment to bear upon their delineations of nature. 
How they do it is more easy to be felt than told or 
accounted for. An artist of this class, in painting 
his landscapes, will rely less on the introduction of 
poetical incident or picturesque buildings for ad- 
dressing the imagination and conveying sentiment, 
than on a suggestive representation of the features 
of nature displaying themselves on earth and sea 
and in the sky — features possessing a beauty and 
sublimity not always perceptible to the vulgar eye, 
but which the painter's art concentrates and inter- 
prets. Such a painter was Constable, and such, in 
the pictures of his best time, was Turner. 
Art of John Constable, the son of a wealthy miller in the 

stable. county of Suffolk, entered as a student of the Royal 
Academy in the year 1800. He began soon to 
exhibit landscape, occasionally painting portraits ; 
but years of exhibiting passed before his landscapes 
succeeded in attracting purchasers or even in being 
regarded with attention. The public taste was not 
yet educated for Constable's original and just repre- 
sentation of natural objects and effects, and pre- 
ferred landscapes of a more smoothly executed and 
mannered description. Deviating from the beaten 
track and disregarding (perhaps to excess) the known 



CHAP. viii.J LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 39 ^ 

schools of landscape art, he was slow of being ap- Not ap- 
preciated, few showing themselves qualified to judge fn h^/g^^^ 
of productions displaying an original cast of mind, ^^f^^^"^^- 
genuine study, and consequent novelty of execution.^ 

The subjects of Mr. Constable's pictures were 
almost entirely taken from the rural scenery of his 
native Suffolk, from the neighbourhood of Salisbury 
which he occasionally visited, and in his later life 
from Hampstead. His well-known picture of ' The 
Lock ' was one of the first that attracted notice. 
Gradually gaining ground, he exhibited in 1819 a 
' View on the River Stour,' which led to his being 
made an associate of the Academy, its full honours 
not being accorded him till ten years after, not long 
prior to his decease.^ His picture of the ' Valley 
Farm ' was bought by Mr. Vernon ; the ' Corn-field ' 
was purchased after his death by subscription for 
the National Collection. 

Such pictures as these, though now justly appre- 
ciated, were in Constable's lifetime usually returned 
to his studio, while the contemporary paintings of 
Callcott and Bonington found ready purchasers. 
Posterity, as in the case of Wilson, recognised the 
merit of Constable when applause and neglect were 
equally indifferent to him. 

The French critics of the day were more dis- 
cerning than his countrymen. On the exhibition 
in the Louvre of his fine picture of the ' Hay- 1826. 
Wain,' now belonging to Mr. H. Vaughan, Con- 



1 Introduction to Constable's English Landscape.^ first edition. 
^ Art Journal, 1855, p. 9. 



392 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK ill. 

Stable had awarded to him a gold medal from the 
King of France; the picture judges remarking 'the 
raciness and originality of his style, which being 
founded entirely in nature is capable of much beauty, 
but dangerous to all imitators.'^ 

During the greater portion of his life Constable 
seldom quitted Suffolk in search of new scenery or 
subjects, unless for an excursion to Salisbury, the 
neighbourhood of which he has commemorated in his 
rainbow pictures of the cathedral. As Mr. Words- 
worth and others have done in poetry, he created 
poetical landscapes out of the meadows and their 
occupants, the canals, the broken fields and wood- 
lands of Suffolk, 

Clothing the palpable and the familiar 
With golden exhalations of the dawn. 

Its char- In the landscapes of Constable the sky was the 
key-note, ' the standard of scale and chief organ of 
sentiment.'^ He gave expression to his pictures by 
a truthful and feeling delineation of the ever-varying 
skies of England ; marking the influence of light 
and shadow upon landscape, not only as giving 
emphasis to particular parts, but as suggestive of 
times of the day and seasons of the year. The 
sparkles reflected in certain lights from smooth 
foliage, the morning dew upon the grass and herbs, 
atmospheric effects produced by rain and sunshine — 
the alternate tears and smiles of a day in June, are 
all represented in the landscapes of this great painter. 

^ Leslie's Life of Constable^ p. 165. 

2 Letter of Constable to a friend ; Leslie's Life of Constable. 



acter. 



CHAP. VIII.] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 393 

In the Burlington House exhibition of deceased 
artists in 1871 Constable was seen to much ad- 
vantage in several examples. The bold and at the 
same time refined treatment, richness and vigour of 
colouring, shown in his pictures of the ' Hay-Wain,' 
and the ^ Cenotaph at Coleorton in memory of Sir 
Joshua Reynolds' (lent by Miss Constable), no one 
could avoid remarking. 

A large proportion of the works of Joseph Mal- 
lard William Turner are now, throug^h his own Turner's 
bequest, included in the National Collection and ^^^ ^"^* 
possess a public interest. The painting career of 
Turner, who was a native of London, commenced 
before that of Constable and continued fourteen 
years longer. His first attempts in art were topo- 
graphical views and sketches in water-colour. From 
this he passed to landscape views of English and 
Welsh scenery, still in water-colour; in executing 
which he was often associated with Thomas Girtin, 
whose art as well as that of the water-colour painter 
Cozens are considered to have influenced the paint- 
ing of Turner. Admitted a student at the Royal 
Academy in 1789, he acquired in the ensuing years 
a fair amount of technical knowledge, though his 
subsequent practice showed that he refused to be 
bound by rule or system. That he became a good 
draughtsm.an is evident from numerous sketches of 
this time, from the skilful architectural drawing of 
his later time, from his delineation of clouds and 
natural forms. If the human figures in his later 
pictures, the forms of boats and other objects, some- 
times betray a defect in design, this may go to 



394 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [book ill. 

prove, not his want, but his neglect of drawing, and 
how much he sacrificed to colour and general effect. 
Turner's devotion to the river Thames showed 
itself in his earliest exhibited water-colour drawings ; 
and when he died nearly sixty years after, the 
Thames from his cottage at Chelsea was probably 
the last object he looked upon. He began to paint 
in oils in 1793, and departing then from his practice 
of water-colour (which however is supposed to have 
influenced his later painting), he produced pictures 
in accordance with the approved manner of the 
older painters in oil, in which shadow and dark 
colour preponderated. The subjects he selected, 
usually scenery and picturesque buildings, now took 
a wider range, while his eye and his imagination 
opened more and more to the expressive power of 
the sky and of atmospheric effects. 
More ap- In the case of Turner's art, as in that of Etty, his 
byTrasts brethren of the Academy showed themselves to be 
than jj^ advance of the public taste, for in 1 799, at the age 

public. of twenty-four, he was elected Associate of the Aca- 
demy and in three years after. Academician ; while 
his pictures then and during many subsequent years 
found few purchasers, and were but imperfectly ap- 
preciated.^ 

Turner was a great traveller and most industrious 
sketcher. Wales, Scotland, France, the coast of 
England, Italy, the Rhine, Switzerland, saw him a 
frequent pilgrim at the various shrines of Nature, 
almost dedicating his life to her worship. Without 

^ Tliornbury's Life of Turner, vol. i. p. 269. 



material 
beauty. 



CHAP. viiL] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 395 

elevating his mental view so as to see the Creator 
in his works, Turner searched everywhere and dis- His 
covered for himself the material truth and beauty of ^ftTr^^ 
creation ; he studied the geological character of hills, 
discriminated the clouds of the sky and the herbs of 
the field, and faithfully represented the ocean in its 
various moods. Storm and sunshine, flood and fire, 
mist and exhalation, all aided in giving expression 
and character to his paintings. 

Mr. Turner's earlier pictures were of a simpler His pic- 
and more truthful character than those of his later 
manner. His marine subjects in Lord Yarborough's 
possession, ' Calais Pier,' the ' Shipwreck,' ' Ships at 
Spithead,' ' Crossing the Brook,' the ' Sun rising 
through Vapour,' are well-known examples of his 
earlier style. Led at first by his admiration of 
Claude, he addressed himself afterwards to paint 
mythological subjects, and imaginative compositions 
such as the Carthage pictures. 

* Dido building Carthage,' placed by Turner's own 
desire beside Claude's * Queen of Sheba ' in the 
National Gallery, and his ' Ulysses and Polyphemus' 
are examples, the one of gorgeous architecture, 
the other of poetical incident, introduced in land- 
scapes distinguished also by a grand representation 
of features of scenery and atmospheric effects. It 
must be admitted however that the poetical interest 
of many of his great mythological and ideal pictures 
is of a somewhat artificial and unsatisfactory kind. 
Opinions may be allowed to differ as to his versions 
of Italian scenery and his rendering of ancient cities. 
In Italian subjects of lake and woodland and bays of 



39^ VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [BOOK III. 

the sea truthfully delineated, there is often a poetry 
and beauty which the introduction of splendid orna- 
ment fails to enhance. 
Turner's Influenced, as is supposed, by his practice in 
manner, water-colour, Mr. Turner's oil-painting gradually 
assumed a lighter tone and more brilliancy of colour. 
' The light key,' says Mr. Burnet, ' upon which most 
of our present landscape-painters work owes its 
origin to Turner.' ^ This principle or theory of 
colouring appears to have so fascinated the painter 
that in the pictures of his later time he carried it to 
excess. His hobby ran away with him. Such 
pictures as ' Phryne going to the Bath as Venus,' 
the ' Whalers,' the ' Golden Bough,' and one or two 
of the Venetian pictures, are fanciful and dreamy 
representations of the play of colour and perspective 
rather than dona fide landscapes. Others however 
of his later pictures, as the ' Ehrenbreitstein,' the 
' Fighting Temeraire,' and several of the Venetian 
pictures, are marked by truth and beauty of colour 
as well as poetical feeling. 

Turner's passion for representing light in all its 
varieties of hue may have led him to experiment 
more than was expedient upon his materials and 
glazes, many of his later pictures and some of an 
earlier date showing already manifest signs of decay. 
To this Dr. Waagen alludes, in his estimate of the 
painter, when (recognising his versatility of talent 
and greatness in landscape) he remarks very de- 

1 Turner and his Wor/es, by John Burnet, p. 6i ; Redgrave's 
Century of Painters^ ii. 113. 



CHAP. VIII.] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 397 

cidedly the ' deficiency of Turner's painting in one 

indispensable element in every work of art, a sound 

technical basis.' ^ 

It is unnecessary here to do more than refer to His en- 
gravings. 
the engraved publications which have emanated from 

Mr. Turner's exquisite drawings in water-colour 
made for the most part with a view to engraving. 
The merits of the ' Rivers of England,' ' Rivers of 
France,' * England and Wales,' the ' Southern Coast,' 
illustrations of Rogers' ' Italy,' &c., have been amply 
discussed and critically noticed in the writings of 
Mr. Ruskin, whose eloquent elucidations of Turner's 
art are well known. The ' Liber Studiorum,' begun 
in 1808 in emulation of the 'Liber Veritatis ' of 
Claude, embraces the whole range of landscape art. 
In this as in his other engraved works, which are 
said to have been the chief source of his wealth. 
Turner carefully superintended and occasionally as- 
sisted the process of engraving and altering the 
plates.^ 

^ The National Collection contains altogether 194 pictures by 
Turner, and a number of water-colour drawings and sketches, the 
greater proportion of which were placed there in accordance 
with an order of the Court of Chancery, forming part of the 
judgment in the suit as to the painter's will. This order appears 
to have gone beyond Mr. Turner's own intention, which was, that 
only his ' finished pictures ' should become the property of the 
nation. His reputation as a painter would probably have rested 
more securely upon a selection of his pictures, entrusted to persons 
of skill, than it does upon the medley of pictures (however valu- 
able) now in the National Gallery. 

2 The mode in which Turner dealt with the proofs of engravings 
with reference to their mercantile value, after the plates were worn, 
cannot meet with approval (Thornbury's Life of Turner, vol. i. 



39^ VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

Although the works of the landscape-painters 
now to be mentioned may not equal those of Wilson, 
Gainsborough, Constable and Turner, yet from the 
individuality of their several styles they have contri- 
buted to stamp on the British school of landscape 
that variety of character by which it is distinguished. 
Land- If many of Turner's pictures are in some sort 

CdHnl ' historical landscapes,' the subjects of William Collins 
(in this respect like those of Morland) are landscape 
pictures of English life. The son of a London 
picture-dealer and connected in early life with George 
Morland, whose painting he had an opportunity of 
studying, Collins was a diligent student at the Royal 
Academy. He was a greater proficient in colouring 
than in drawing ; and had the merit of not experi- 
menting on risky methods and vehicles in painting. 

The first picture by which Collins became known 
was the ' Sale of the Pet Lamb,' a good example of 
his manner ; and this was followed by many others, 
of which it would be difficult to say whether a 
preference should be given to the landscape or to 
the rural people, children and fishermen, by which it 
is animated. His works had a fair share of the 
patronage of the buyers of pictures from the time of 
1820. his election as an Academician till his death. 

The landscapes of Collins and the groups and 
scenes represented are of a harmonious and soothing 
character ; the quiet sunlight of his skies seeming to 
infuse itself into the rural life in which ' young Eng- 

ch. 15). And it is no apology for the conduct in this particular 
• of the English artist that anecdotes of a similar kind are recorded 
of Rembrandt. 



ton. 



CHAP. VIII.] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 399 

land ' plays a conspicuous part. A late visit to Italy 1837. 
gave him an opportunity of clothing his art in Italian 
dress ; but his foreign pictures are not considered 
equal to his more congenial subjects of English 
scenery. 

The landscapes of R. P. Bonlngton and W. I. 
Mliller (already noticed as a painter of life-subjects 
united with landscape) are highly valued, although 
neither of these painters had the fortune to be 
educated at the classes of the Royal Academy. 
Both died at a comparatively early age. 

Bonington's instruction in painting was chiefly Boning- 
gathered from his studies in the Louvre and attend- 
ance at the * Ecole des beaux Arts ' in Paris. His 
favourite subjects were of coast scenery, enlivened 
by men and boys drawing their nets, and French fish- 
women with their scaly stores and motley company. 
His oil paintings and drawings In water-colour were 
much run upon by the French, and his style is 
supposed to have influenced more than one of their 
recent painters of landscape. The French were 
inclined to adopt him as of their school, but 
Bonlngton always retained his individuality of style, 
which was superior to that of the Vernets and their 
followers. 

In Venice, where he set up his easel after painting 
for a time in France, he again resorted to coast 
scenery, rendered doubly interesting to the painter 
by Its association with that city where — 

The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, 
Ebbing and flowing, and the salt sea-weed 
CHngs to the marble of her palaces. 



400 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book III. 

Amongst the four pictures exhibited by Bonington 
at the Royal Academy, one was a ' Coast Scene,' 
and another the ' Grand Canal of Venice with the 
Church of Santa Maria della Salute.' A small pic- 
ture of the ' Piazetta and Column of St. Mark ' is now 
in the National Gallery. 

Both Mliller and Bonington excelled in richness 
and harmony of colouring and in the management 
of light and shade, drawing with accuracy and 
graceful feeling. Neither of these painters experi- 
mented in colour for the sake of effect, and their 
pictures are believed to be in good preservation.-^ 
Sir A. The works of Sir Augustus W. Callcott, another 

' sea-shore painter,' were very popular in his lifetime, 
but will hardly receive the same liberal meed of ap- 
probation in the present day. A native of Ken- 
sington, Callcott was a student at the Royal 
Academy classes, and a pupil of Hoppner. After 
some trials of portrait-painting he soon settled 
1803. down to landscape ; to the practice of w^hich he 
almost entirely devoted the remainder of his 
lifetime. His pictures during the first half of 
this period are regarded as superior to those of 

1 In this survey of landscape-painting the art of several painters 
contemporary with those mentioned in the text, as the Cromes of 
Norwich, Stark, Cotman, and other later painters, has been left 
unmentioned, although undoubtedly respectable delineators of 
English scenery. The landscapes especially of ' old Crome ' fre- 
quently show both truthful painting and artistic feeling. In the 
annals of British art the name of Sir George Beaumont deserves, 
at the least, a kindly reminiscence, as well on account of his own 
performances in landscape as of his friendly patronage of native 
painters, at a period when British art and its professors were more 
in want of encouragement and recognition than they now are. 



CHAP, VIII.] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING, ETC. \0\ 

his later years when he painted less from nature 
and more from previous sketches and memory. He 
was elected a Royal Academician in 1810 and was 
knighted some years before his death. 1844. 

Without much poetical feeling, and rarely imbued 
with the higher qualities of landscape, the paintings Qualities 
of Sir Augustus Callcott are sufficiently agreeable cott's 
compositions. When seen beside the pictures of P^^^^^^s- 
Constable and Stanfield they want power and effect. 
The colouring of his large pictures especially ap- 
pears defective in richness and brilliancy, and the 
subjects and treatment frequently insipid. Nor is 
his art much redeemed by the lack-a-daisical picture 
of ' Raphael and the Fornarina.' At the same time 
in most of Callcott's works there is evident a certain 
tastefulness and delicacy of handling, qualities which 
may have been still more attractive when the pic- 
tures were freshly painted. 

The productions of John Martin have, like most J.Martin. 
works of original genius, been the subject of great 
praise and great censure. His education in art, 
first at Newcastle and subsequently in London, was 
of an irregular kind. He painted on glass and 
china in enamel colours with a glass manufacturer 
in the Strand ; while at the same time the study of 
architecture and perspective, from the use of which 
in his paintings he afterwards produced such won- 
derful effects, was diligently pursued by him. 

In 181 1 Martin began to exhibit at the Royal 
Academy ; but in the immediately subsequent years 
he thought himself aggrieved by the proceedings 
of the ' hanging committee,' and quarrelled with the 

D D 



402 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

Academicians as a body, though continuing on good 

terms with many of them individually. His * Bel- 

His com- shazzar's Feast,' a good example of his style, was 

positions, i -n* • ♦ i t • • i • i i 

and mode sent to the British Institution, where it was highly 

men? " appreciated and received an award of 200 guineas. 

Of this picture Wilkie observed ; ^ — 

In treating the subject his great elements seem to be 
the geometrical properties of space, magnitude and number, 
in the use of which he may be said to be boundless. The 
great merit of the picture however is perhaps in the con- 
trivance and disposition of the architecture, which is full of 
imagination. Common observers seem very much struck 
with this picture, indeed more than they are in general 
with any picture. But artists, so far as I can learn from 
the most considerable and important of them, do not admit 
its claims to the same extent. 

Other remarkable pictures followed, — the ' De- 
struction of Pompeii and Herculaneum,' the 
* Departure of the Israelites from Egypt,' the * Fall 
of Nineveh,' the * Creation,' the ' Deluge.' These 
works are for the most part well known by en- 
gravings in mezzotinto. The engraved illustrations 
by Martin of Milton's * Paradise Lost ' are also 
vigorous and effective ; but the plates of these as 
well as of some of his other prints have been 
retouched. 

The compositions of Mr. Martin are certainly 
grand and impressive, although his colouring and 
violent contrasts of light and shadow will be re- 
garded as exaggerated, if tried by a natural standard. 
From frequent repetition of the same class of sub- 
jects his eccentric style of painting grew into a sort 

^ February, 1821 ; Cunningham's Life of Wi/kic, ii. 57. 



CHAP. VIII.] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING, ETC. 403 

of mannerism ; and a picture or print from his hand 
would be known to be so at first sight. If any 
landscape pictures in which incidents are repre- 
sented by the introduction of grouped figures can 
be called ' historical ' paintings, those of Martin 
may be so entitled ; though it must be admitted that 
the figures are often huddled together and imper- 
fectly drawn, and the expression is to be sought in 
the striking features and general effect of the scene 
rather than in the countenances of the actors. 

Another painter of striking effects- was Francis f. Dan- 
Danby. A native of the county of Wexford, Danby stnking 
received his first art education in Dublin at the ^^^^^^s- 
school of the Society of Arts.^ The success of 
some early efforts in landscape encouraged him to 
visit England, where settling for a time at Bristol 
he painted landscapes In oil for exhibition at the 
Royal Academy. From the first he appears to have 
devoted himself to those evening and occasionally 
morning effects of glowing sunlight, with broad con- 
trasted shadows, for which he afterwards became so 
celebrated. His picture of the 'Upas Tree' and 
some others had already attracted notice, but his 
'Sunset at Sea after a Storm' in 1824, and his 
' Israelites passing through the Red Sea by the 
light of the Pillar of Fire,' marked him as a painter 
of no common order. The first of these pictures 
was bought by Sir Thomas Lawrence, the other by 
the Marquis of Stafford. 

^ The Royal Hibernian Academy of Art received its charter in 
1823, and was appointed to consist of fourteen Academicians and 
ten Associates. Its first exhibition was opened in DubHn in 1826. 

D D 2 



404 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

Mr. Danby having been elected an Associate of 
the Academy, continued to exhibit (with an interval 
of ten years spent abroad) till his death in 1861. 
In his ' Passage of the Red Sea,' and in a sub- 
sequent picture of the ' Opening of the Sixth Seal,' 
there appeared a considerable resemblance to the 
style of Martin in subjects of a similar character, 
but with less scenic effect and better drawing and 
execution. From his recurring with a constancy 
which ran into monotony to the same kind of 
glowing effects of light, he acquired, like Martin, a 
peculiar manner, but his range of subjects was wider 
and embraced more natural scenes of landscape. 

Danby's pictures were usually of an interesting 
character (as the ' Evening Gun ' exhibited at the 
1857. Manchester Exhibition), conveying the impression 
of their emanating from a mind of poetical tem- 
perament, expressive in their skies, and generally 
embodying some poetical sentiment or incident. 
Scottish While landscape art was thus holding its way in 
scape art. the southern part of the island, the commencement of 
jg exhibitions in Edinburgh and the institution of the 

' Royal Scottish Academy' in 1838 brought out some 
good painting in this department in Scotland. The 
landscapes of Alexander Nasmyth^ were carefully 

1 Alexander Nasmyth, who studied in the Trustees' School under 
Runciman and Allan Ramsay, survived till 1840. This School of 
Design of the Board of Trustees for encouraging manufactures in 
Scotland, which was set on foot in 1760, and was the first school 
of design established in the United Kingdom at the public ex- 
pense, has been of late years affihated to the central department 
of Science and Art in London. See Treasury Minute^ February, 
1858, in Sir G. Harvey's Notes o)i tJie Royal Scottish Academy^ p. 141. 



CHAP. VIII.] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING, ETC. 4^5 

painted, although with a certain minuteness of The 
manner and a want of that breadth of handHng myths, 
visible in the landscapes of his son Patrick ; distin- 
guished as the latter were also by superior boldness 
and delicacy of style. Patrick Nasmyth's painting 
had a considerable resemblance to, if it was not 
founded on, that of the Dutch school, particularly 
Wynants ; and his pictures, delineating chiefly 
English rural scenery, were deservedly admired 
for their masterly execution and colouring. He 
exhibited occasionally at the exhibitions of the 1812-31. 
Royal Academy, and two cabinet-size examples of 
his landscapes are at South Kensington in the 
National Collection. 

The manner of the elder Nasmyth was visible, and 
perhaps more agreeably visible than in his own 
paintings, in the tasteful and generally small-sized 
landscapes of his daughters, who exhibited at the 
Scottish Academy. 

The landscapes of Andrew Wilson, a pupil of Andrew 
Alexander Nasmyth and student at the Royal Aca- ^^^^°^- 
demy of London, were sent for the most part to 
the Edinburgh exhibitions. They were marked 
(especially his delineations of Italian scenery) by 
refined and delicate treatment and good colouring. 
Wilson spent the last twenty years of his life almost 1828-48, 
entirely in Italy, where his knowledge of pictures 
occasioned his being much employed for collectors 
in England.^ 

1 Cunningham's Life of Wilkie ; Drummond's Catalogue of the 
Scottish National Gallery. When in Genoa at an early period of 
his hfe, Andrew Wilson v/as elected a member of the Ligurian 



406 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 



w. Sim- William Simson, a Scottish Academician, was a 
^^^' truthful painter of landscape, a good colourist, and 

careful in his execution. 
Land- The Rev. John Thomson, minister of Dudding- 

Rev^T °^ stone near Edinburgh, was, like the Rev. Hugh 
Thorn- Peters, a painter as well as a clergyman. It may 
appear singular to those who are aware of the perse- 
cution which Mr. Home, the author of * Douglas,' 
underwent for writing a tragedy, that Mr. Thomson 
should have been allowed without remonstrance for 
so many years to act in the double capacity of a 
parish minister and an artist painting and selling his 
pictures. The anomaly however was overlooked. 
Mr. Thomson began to exhibit in 1808, and from 
1840. th^^ ^^^^ ^"^ ^^'^ decease he sent to the Edinburgh 
exhibitions one hundred and nine landscape-pictures. 
He was an honorary member of the Scottish Aca- 
Their demy. His style is thought to have been formed in 
style. ^ considerable degree on that of Poussin, but always 
having reference to nature. His subjects were 
mostly Scottish inland and coast scenes. His 
pictures of woodland scenery have a brownish hue 
and the shadows rather dark. His sea-coast pieces 
have less of this inclination towards the old 
masters, and were thought at one time to resemble 



Academy, and in that capacity had on one occasion to attend 
the first Napoleon at an inspection of the works of modern 
artists. On pausing to examine a picture by Wilson, a Genoese 
academician, who bore the artist no good will, observed to the 
Emperor that the picture was by an Englishman ; upon which 
Napoleon said sternly to his officious informant, ' Le talent n'a 
pas de pays.' 



CHAP. VIII.] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING, ETC, 407 

the earlier painting of Turner, with perhaps greater 
breadth of effect' ^ 

Mr. Thomson was engaged along with Mr. Turner 
to make the drawings for Sir Walter Scott's ' Provin- . 
clal Antiquities of Scotland.' Like his distinguished 
coadjutor, he seems to have experimented in his 
materials and pigments, his pictures at the present 
day showing too frequently unequivocal signs either 
of decay or of having been in the hands of the 
picture-restorer.^ 

The landscapes of Horatio Macculloch, R.S.A., Horatio 
may be said to have taken that place in Scottish art loch. 
which was left vacant by the decease of Thomson 
of Duddingstone. The art-education of Macculloch 
was of an irregular character, commencing at a 
drawing-school in his native city of Glasgow. From 
Glasgow he went to reside in Edinburgh, where he 
was employed in 1825 in colouring some works of 
natural history, while his mornings were devoted to 
sketching in the environs. His first commission 
was from a citizen of Glasgow (Provost Lumsden), 
who engaged him to paint several large pictures for 
the hall of his house. 

Having acquired reputation by his execution of 
this work, Macculloch exhibited landscapes for 
several years in the exhibitions commenced In 
Glasgow by the Dilettanti Society. After the 



1 Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk (18 18), by J. G. Lockhart, 
vol. ii. p. 290. 

2 Several good examples of the Rev. J. Thomson are in the 
Scottish National Gallery, and in the collection of R. Horn, Esq., 
Edinburgh ; and one in the National Collection atSouthKensing on. 



4oS VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. fBOOK. iir. 

exhibitions of the Royal Scottish Academy com- 
1839. menced, he exhibited for the most part in Edin- 
burgh. He soon became a distinguished member 
of that Academy, having his residence in Edin- 
burgh, and always visiting during the summer 
His land- rnonths the picturesque scenery of the Highlands 
scape art. ^^^ ^^ ^M^^\. of Scotland. One of his pictures 
that attracted much notice was a ' View of Cadzow 
Park ' near Hamilton, but his best landscapes were 
those of highland scenery. The serrated mountain 
chains and lochs of Skye, the rapid streams and 
wooded glens, rocks and heathery moors of Inver- 
ness, lighted up by passing gleams of sunshine, the 
mist-enveloped hills of the West Highlands with 
their old castles and thinly scattered habitations, 
were faithfully and expressively transferred to his 
canvases. 

Mr. Macculloch's principal works were not merely 
sketched, but were mostly painted in the open air, 
and his first attack of illness was in part caused 
Died, by his persisting in painting for many hours con- 
1867. tinuously in an exposed locality during very cold 
weather.^ His finished pictures were carefully exe- 
cuted and with much technical skill ; the lights and 
shadows well defined and the colouring truthful and 
clearly brought out. His style of painting was alto- 
gether more original than that of Thomson, and 
conveyed less the impression of composition and 
study. Neither of these landscape-painters, whose 
reputation was made in Scotland, and where their 

^ Dnimmond's Catalogue of the Scofi'isli National Gallery. 



CHAP. viiL] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING, ETC. 409 

pictures had a ready sale, were exhibitors to any 
extent in the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. 

John Wilson, an honorary member of the j. wil-' 
Scottish Academy and one of the founders of the 
Suffolk Street Society of British Artists, was a good 
painter of marine subjects. He was associated with 
Messrs. Roberts and Stanheld (to both of whom he 
was senior) in their early life as a scene-painter at 
the theatres, and his marine painting is supposed to 
have partly influenced the style of Stanfield, if not 
also of Roberts. Two pictures by him are In the 
Scottish National Gallery. 

This review of British landscape-painting would 
be Imperfect without mention of the art of two dis- 
tinguished painters not long since deceased — David 
Roberts and Clarkson Stanfield. 

The works of Roberts, a native of Edinburgh, Painting 
were of that class of landscape of which the excel- Roberts. 
lence consists as much In the interesting character of 
the artificial components of the subject — generally 
architectural buildings broadly and picturesquely 
treated — as in a representation of the features of 
nature. His art-education was quite different from 
the training of the schools, and was derived from 
early practice as a house-decorator and afterwards 
as a scene-painter for the theatres. 

Having painted scenes for a year or two at the 
theatres of Edinburgh and Glasgow, Roberts was 
employed about the year 1822 In the same capacity 
in London, where Stanfield was similarly engaged. 
This early practice no doubt gave to his art that 
effective and facile manner which it always retained. 



4IO VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iir. 

Early The inborn genius of Roberts led him from scene- 

painting to a higher walk, and induced him to study 
architectural painting in oil. His first attempts on 

1B22, small canvases, exhibited at an exhibition of the 
works of living artists in Edinburgh were of this 
kind — Street architecture of the old town of Edin- 
burgh, and the Interior of New Abbey, Dumfries- 
shire. Having in London joined the Society of 
British Artists in Suffolk Street, he exhibited with 
them views of Melrose and Dryburgh Abbeys. 
Finding his way across the Channel to Dieppe 
and Rouen he pursued the bent of his taste for 
picturesque architecture ; his first exhibited work 

1826, at the Royal Academy being a view of Rouen 
Cathedral. 

Then commenced those travels of Mr. Roberts 
abroad, annual and for longer periods, the fruits of 
which were displayed in his well-known pictures and 
drawings. After some years he quitted the Society 
in Suffolk Street (upon perfectly good terms with its 
members) in order to join the Royal Academy, of 
which he was elected a member in 1841. He 
visited a considerable part of the continent of 
Europe, gathering honey where he could for the 
English hive ; he made acquaintance with the 
temples and mosques of Egypt and the Nile, 
crossed the Arabian desert, and with the pencil and 
sketch-book of an artist, if not with the staff and 
' sandal shone ' of a pilgrim, traversed Syria and 
the Holy Land. His principal pictures were made 
from selected drawings, the originals being in water- 
colour. The drawings were carefully and artis- 



CHAP. VIII.] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING, ETC, 4II 

tically finished, and they furnished materials for 
successive works, mostly in chromo-lithog-raphy. 

Although the oil-pictures of Mr. Roberts were His pic- 
nearly all of them views of remarkable buildings and ^od^e^of 
places, yet their picturesque treatment and clever ^^^^" 
handling, the rich colouring of the accessories and 
the characteristic groups of figures, imparted to them 
an Interest such as attaches only to paintings of a high 
class ; while the uncommon variety of his subjects, 
all rendered with characteristic expression, simplicity 
and breadth, saved his style from running into 
mannerism. His pictures from Eg3'pt and Baal- 1841-5. 
bee are good examples of his art ; as w^ell as his 
* Jerusalem ' and his large picture of ' Rome,' pre- 
sented to the Scottish Academy, and now in the 
Scotch National Gallery. His pictures were always 
in demand. The closing years of Mr. Roberts's life 
were devoted to paintings illustrative of London and 
the buildings seen along the banks of the Thames, 
including St Paul's, Somerset House, the bridges 
and shipping, and the new Palace of Westminster- 
Like the earlier works of the artist, these were 
effective and picturesque, but slighter in their exe- 
cution. 

Roberts was survived three years by his friend 
and contemporary Clarkson Stanfield, a native of c. Stan- 
Sunderland, whose death in 1867 made a marked ^ ' 
blank in the department of marine painting. Stan- 
field, like Roberts, had no regular apprenticeship 
in art, but after serving for some time as a boy 
in the marine service, he discovered that he had a 
vocation for scene-painting. He was employed in 



412 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK ill. 

Also a this department at Drury Lane theatre, and contri- 
painten^ buted, as well as Roberts, to elevate and improve 
the pictorial character of stage scenery. 

When Stanfield turned his attention to painting 
in oils, the practice of stage-painting would un- 
doubtedly influence his style, but it does not seem 
to have done so to the same extent as with Roberts. 
His bent was more towards marine subjects, in 
which there is perhaps less scope for stage effect 
than in architectural scenery ; though in his Italian 
pictures and drawings Stanfield afterwards displayed 
a fair knowledge of architecture and an appreciation 
of its picturesque effects. 

Like most painters of landscape he made occa- 
sional foreign tours, of which the results were seen 
in his pictures. One of the first of his exhibited 
pictures that drew attention was his ' Mount St. 
Michael,' which was followed by two commission 
pictures for William IV., the * Opening of London 
Bridge ' and * Portsmouth Harbour.' 

Mr. Stanfield was elected a Royal Academician In 
1835, and from that period till his death his effective 
marine views and (though in less number) his sub- 
jects of a more exclusively landscape character con- 
tinued to adorn the exhibitions of the Academy 
and to be purchased for the mansions of the nobility 
and merchants of England. Two companion pic- 
1864. tures ' Peace ' and * War,' of his later time, were 
considered equal if not superior to any of his 
previous productions. 
His A good opportunity for appreciating the art of 

pictures. Stanfield was afforded by the exhibition of a number 



CHAP. VIII.] LANDSCAPE-PAINTING, ETC, 413 

of his pictures in the spring of 1870 in the BurHng- 
ton House rooms of the Royal Academy. The 
ever- recurring grey-green colour of his marine 
pieces, in most instances truthful, but (like the ocean 
itself when compared with the land) monotonous, 
was very manifest. In pictures of a more inland 
landscape character his hand would hardly have 
been recognised by those not perfectly familiar with 
his style or who were more accustomed to his sea- 
pieces. His marine pictures gave the impression of 
vigorous and well-composed representations of their 
subjects, but deficient in that poetry of atmospheric 
effects, combined with truthfulness and brilliancy 
of hue, for which the skies of Constable and of 
Turner in his best time are so remarkable. 



4H VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [BOOK ill. 



CHAPTER IX, — Supplementary, 

Water- Colour Drawing — Engraving, 

After giving a detailed view of the condition of the 
Art of Painting in Britain, in its principal phase of 
oil-painting, from the reign of George I. up to nearly 
the present time, some may think I ought to have 
added to it a notice of the kindred though less 
Important subjects of Water-colour painting and 
Engraving. 
Water- Painting In water-colour, w^hlch was practised 

painting, with much success In the form of miniature painting 
by Samuel Cooper and Isaac and Peter Oliver In the 
17th century, experienced a marvellous revival in 
England In the end of the i8th and the commence- 
ment of the present century. Its practice and appli- 
cation, limited at first to miniature, to flowers and 
fruit and to landscape, has gradually extended itself 
to nearly all the subjects of oil-painting.^ The 



* The drawing and painting of landscapes in water-colour, 
starting from the topographical views and hand-coloured prints of 
Paul Sandby and others, has been elevated into an important 
branch of art by the talent of Cozens, Chrystal, Girtin, Turner, 
and their successors. In Scotland the pictures and sketches in 
water-colour of Grecian scenery by H. W. Williams, remarkable 
for their freedom of handling and the spirit and feeling of their 
execution, were the subject of general admiration some fifty 



CHAP. IX.] SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER. 415 

establishment In 1805 of the Society of Painters in 
Water-colour and the exhibitions of their works 
gave to water-colour painting in England an inde- 
pendent position and high reputation. By the dis- 
covery of new technical methods and the extension its ranf^e 
of the capabilities and practice of the art, as well J^j^ened 
as by the formation of new Societies, this reputation 
has been maintained and increased ; and painting in 
water-colour Is now a department of art in which 
Great Britain excels all other nations. 

How far the practice of this species of painting may 
in the present century have influenced oil-painting 
with reference to the tone of colour and the propor- 
tion between light and dark colours in a picture, or 
whether water-colour painting may not have bor- 
rowed or ought still to borrow from oil-painting, if 
possible^ more depth and richness of tone, are topics 
I shall not venture to discuss. When sufficient 
materials exist for a satisfactory history or account 
of painting In water-colour and Its professors, it will 
no doubt be attempted by some one capable of doing 
justice to the subject. 

The art of the engraver is of essential Import- Engrav- 
ance to that of the painter, In so far as it preserves ^^^' 
(sometimes beyond the date of the existence of his 
picture) the chief characteristics of the painter's 
work, and in the form of engraved prints gives to 
those works a wide circulation. Good engraving Is 

years ago, and were instrumental in drawing public attention in 
Scotland towards this department of art. — Peter's Letters to his 
Kinsfolk (18 1 8), by J. G. Lockhart, vol. ii. 



41 6 VIE IV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book in. 

therefore an art to be encouraged by Academies as 
well as by the public. 

The history of engraving and of its various kinds 
is sufficiently known. In the latter portion of the 
1 8th century the two great branches of engraving, 
line and mezzotint, were brought to a state of per- 
fection in England which has been hardly main- 
tained in the present century ; although engraving in 
small on steel and wood for book-illustration has of 
late years made very marked progress. 

With the exception of the works of the elder 
English Faithorne and of White in line engraving, John 
ingofthe Smith in mezzotinto, and one or two others, no 
century, tolerable engraving work was seen in England 
before the time of Hogarth, who as an engraver 
was more remarkable for expression and force than 
Sir R. refinement and finish. Robert Strange (a Scot- 
tish Jacobite, pupil of an engraver of the name of 
Cooper, and of Le Bas at Paris) was the first British 
artist who produced examples of historical engraving 
in line capable of competing with the skilful French 
engravers of the i8th century. Strange engraved 
from about 1750 to 1787, and had the merit of ele- 
vating his art to a higher position than it had yet 
attained in Britain. Although his drawing of the 
nude was not uniformly correct, and his arms and 
hands as well as his treatment of skies may be liable 
to criticism, his representation of the texture and 
porous character of flesh (as in his engravings from 
Titian) has not been excelled. The engravings by 
Strange are mostly from the Italian masters, and in 
too great proportion from the Bolognese school ; 



Strange. 



CHAP. IX.] SUPPLEMENTARY. 4 1 7 

nearly a solitary exception being his print from 
West's picture of two deceased children of George 
III. descending with an angel. The drawings for 
his engravings from the foreign masters were made 
by himself from the original pictures. Sir R. 
Strange's plates, in number about sixty, are dis- strange's 
tinguished by an admirable union of the work of the ^ ^^^^' 
dry point with the graver, and are harmonious in 
tone as well as vigorous in execution.^ 

William Woollett, who died in 1785, if inferior to Woollett 
Strange in historical engraving, excelled all his con- {jne en- 
temporaries in landscape. So far as engravings can s^''^^^'^^- 
represent a coloured landscape picture, the prints of 
Woollett give an admirable rendering of the land- 
scapes of Richard Wilson. Other able engravers In 
line were John Hall, John K. Sherwin (who shows 
too much cross hatching and too little of the dry 
point), William Sharpe, the two Pyes, Raimbach, 
John Burnet, Stewart, and Fox. 

In mezzotinto the English engravers of the last .Mezzo- 
century have produced some admirable work In por- graving." 
trait ; Earlom and one or two others taking a wider 
range. Many of the portraits of Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds have been beautifully rendered In the mezzo- 
tints of Houston, M'Ardell, James Ward, Fisher, &c. 



^ Sir Robert Strange was a member of several foreign Acade- 
mies, and in the museums of Italy and France his engravings are 
still held in great respect. At the time of his death in London in 
1792 most of his copperplates were in good condition; and for 
twenty-five years subsequent to that date impressions were taken 
from them by his family, after which the plates were destroyed. — • 
Dennistoun's Memoirs of Sir Robert Strange, vol. ii. p. 270. 

E E 



4l8 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book ill. 

The method of mezzotint has shown itself better 
calculated than line engraving to express a painter- 
like feeling, and to indicate fine effects of light 
and shade ; but the plates becoming sooner worn, 
the impressions more readily deteriorate. A neces- 
sary evil attendant upon engraving of all kinds is 
the wearing out of the metal plates and the conse- 
quent retouching and cutting of worn plates for 
commercial purposes. 



BOOK IV. 



SCULPTURE 



E E 2 



CHAP. L] SCULPTURE. 42 1 



CHAPTER I. 

BRITISH SCULPTURAL ART. 

Rise of British Scidpture — Flaxmajt and his i^nmediate 
predecessors — Nollekens, Bacon, Banks — High art of Flax- 
man — Sculptural art of Sir R. Westinacott — Sir F. 
Chantrey — W. Behnes. 

With Roubillac, a Frenchman by birth, who died in 
1762, may be said to have closed that school of 
sculpture in England influenced by the manner of 
the Italian sculptor Bernini ; a manner displaying 
much power of execution and expression, but look- 
ing more to picturesque effect and meretricious 
ornament than to simplicity and dignity of style. 
The chief credit of introducing a better and purer 
style is due to Flaxman ; but he was preceded by 
several English artists of ability, who had begun 
to form their taste upon nature and the Grecian 
antique, and were precursors of a sounder condition 
of sculptural art. 

The works of Joseph Nollekens, born In London Noiie- 
of Flemish parentage and a pupil of Scheemakers, 
were principally busts ; though he executed also a 
variety of poetical statues, monumental groups, and 
mythological subjects. Several of his early model- 
lings having received the premiums of the Society 
of Arts, he proceeded to Italy to pursue his studies 
in sculpture. He displayed indefatigable diligence 
in improving himself in his art, doing a little busi- 



42 2 V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book IV. 

ness at the same time In the trade (then very com- 
mon) of purchasing and restoring ancient pieces of 
sculpture, some specimens of which form part of the 
Townley collection now in the British Museum/ 

When in Rome Nollekens modelled his busts of 
Garrick and Sterne, the conspicuous merit of which 
obtained for him an Introduction to practice on his 
1770. return to England. He was soon after elected a 
1772. Royal Academician, and had constant employment 
for a long series of years. A finely executed bas- 
relief In marble by Nollekens of ' Two Children 
embracing' (dated 1773) Is In possession of the 
Royal Academy. 
Hisbusts. Mr. Nollekens' forte was In his busts, which were 
unaffected and truthful. His statue of Mr. Pitt at 
Cambridge (the head of which was wrought from 
a mask taken after death and from Hoppner's pic- 
ture) is generally regarded as his master-piece. 
His heathen gods and goddesses were of the con- 
ventional type ; a Venus pouring ambrosia on her 
hair being considered by himself as his best work of 
this kind. His knowledge of anatomy being de- 
fective, he preferred rounded forms, as of Venus 
and Bacchus, to subjects requiring more display of 
muscle and bone. 
And Nollekens usually modelled from nature, with the 

ling, exception of the feet of his female figures, which he 

preferred taking from the feet of the Venus di 

^ Nollekens and his Times^ 2 vols. 1828, by J. T. Smith, — a work 
in which the author has taken a somewhat unfair advantage of the 
intimate knowledge which circumstances afforded him of Mr. 
Nollekens and his affairs. 



CHAP. I.] SCULPTURE. 



Medici, alleging that no Englishwoman had good 
toes.^ His work is not considered to produce that 
lively representation of flesh in marble some sculp- 
tors attain to ; which may depend partly on the 
execution of the assistant who works the marble 
from the model, though in a greater degree on that 
of the artist himself who retouches it. Busts by 
Nollekens of Mr. Pitt in marble and of Mr. Fox In 
terra cotta are now in the National Portrait Gallery. 

The art-work of John Bacon, a native of South- Art-work 
ampton and a sculptor much employed in his day, ° ^^^^' 
commenced with modelling for an artllicial stone 
manufactory in Lambeth. Having gained in suc- 
cessive years the premiums of the Society of Arts 
for models in clay (rewards whose value was not 
enhanced by the difficulty of obtaining them), he 
entered the classes of the Royal Academy on Its 
first institution in 1 769, and he received from the 
hands of the president. Sir Joshua Reynolds, for a 
bas-relief of '^neas escaping from Troy,' the first 
gold medal for sculpture awarded by the Academy. 

Mr. Bacon then began to produce in marble, and 
was the inventor of an instrument, afterwards very 
generally adopted, for transferring the form of the 
model to the marble by a more accurate and better 
method than that hitherto in use. 

One of the earliest exhibited works in the sculp- 
ture department of the Royal x^cademy was a model 
of Mars by Bacon, produced afterwards in marble 
for Lord Yarborough ; and which led to Dr. Mark- 
ham commissioning from him a bust of the king for 

^ NoIlcJzcns and his Times, by J. .T. Smith. 



424 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iv. 

the hall of Christ Church, Oxford. With this bust 
George III. was so satisfied, as the work of an 
English-bred artist, that he had it re-produced for 
presentation to several public institutions. 
R.A. Bacon was much engaged in the practice of 

portrait and monumental sculpture. His busts of 
the Marquis Wellesley in the National Gallery and 
the statues of Dr. Johnson and John Howard in 
St. Paul's are favourable examples of his art, which 
showed itself to most advantage in subjects of a 
kind where a faithful representation of real life was 
itself sufficient for effect. His sculpture was not 
impressed with much feeling of ideal beauty, though 
several of his subjects, particularly the accessory 
figures, are modelled with great refinement and with 
just sentiment. His elaborate monumental group 
to the memory of Lord Chatham is very promi- 
nent in Westminster Abbey, but it may be doubted 
whether Cowper's eulogium on it will be confirmed 
by the verdict of posterity.^ 
Sculpture The sculpture of Thomas Banks was of a more 
Banks. poetical character that that of his contemporaries 
Nollekens and Bacon. After an early education of 
an irregular character, and having had awarded to 
him various premiums of the Society of Arts, Banks 
became a student of the Royal Academy classes at 
their commencement. For a bas-relief of the ' Rape 
of Proserpine ' he received the gold medal entitling 

^ ' Bacon there 

Gives more than female beauty to a stone, 
And Chatham's eloquence to marl^le lips.' 

T/ic Task, book i. 



CHAP. I.] SCULPTURE. 425 

him to travel in Italy at the expense of the Academy, 
and study for three years. He remained seven years 
in Italy. 

Rome was at that time, even more than it is now 
since the acquisition to this country of the Elgin 
marbles, a school of art which no British sculptor 
aiming high in his profession could omit to study in. 
A painter might, with as much or more profit, have 
recourse to Venice, but a great sculptor could 
hardly be formed without studying in Rome. Banks 
had already been studying from nature, and during 
his residence in Rome ' the ancient groups and 
statues, the basso-relievos, and the works of Michael 
Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, roused every faculty of 
his soul, and urged him to labour night and day in a 
noble emulation of those miracles of art and wonders 
of the world.' -^ 

Mr. Banks executed at Rome a bas-relief in marble Of a 
of ' Caractacus before Claudius,' composed on the character, 
principle of the relievos on the ancient sarcophagi, 
which was bought by the Duke of Buckingham and 
placed at Stowe ; also an alto-relievo in plaster of 
* Thetis and the Nymphs with Achilles,' an entirely 
original composition of the epic class, afterwards 
produced in marble, and now in the National Gallery. 
His statue of ' Cupid catching a Butterfly on his 
Wing ' was modelled and partly executed at Rome, 
and was finished on his return to England in 1779.^ 

1 Address on the Death of Tho?nas Ba/iks, R.A., 1805, by John 
Flaxman. 

2 From the following passage in a letter of Banks to Nathaniel 
Smith, of London, 11 ^d it appears that he had been learning at 



426 VIEJV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book IV. 

Seeing little prospect of employment at home in 
the department of ideal sculpture, Banks repaired 
to Petersburgh, taking with him his statue of 
Cupid, which was purchased by the Empress Ca- 
therine. Not being inclined to accept a commission 
offered him in Russia to represent in sculpture the 
* Armed Neutrality,' he returned in the following 
year to England, and applied himself with laudable 
perseverance to the whole art of sculpture.^ A bust 
in bronze by Banks of Warren Hastings of this 
time is now in the National Portrait Gallery ; but 
his most notable productions were models of the 
' Mourning Achilles ' and of the ' Falling Titan,' the 
latter a presentation work to the Royal Academy 
upon his election into that body. 

In monumental sculpture one of his chief per- 
formances was a bas-relief in memory of Mrs. Petrie, 
placed in Lewisham church, Kent, representing the 
lady dying, supported by Faith and attended by 
Hope and Charity.^ This work and the two bas- 
reliefs of Caractacus and Thetis were characterised 
by Flaxman as standard in sentiment and execution, 

Rome the use and working of the chisel, probably about the very- 
date of the first introduction in England of Bacon's invention for 
copying the model in marble ; — Your good friend Capezoldi has 
been truly kind to niej he has improved me much by the in- 
structions he has given me in cutting the marble, in which the 
Italians beat us hollow.' — Smith's NoUekeiis and his Times, ii. 
194. 

^ Address 011 the Death of T. Banks, by Mr. Flaxman. 

2 Another monumental work by Banks was a memorial to the 
only daughter of Sir B. Boothby in Ashbourne church, Derby- 
shire, representing a young girl asleep on a couch. An etching 
exists of a drawing by Rembrandt of a similar subject. 



man. 



CHAP. I.] SCULPTURE. 427 

and unequalled at that date by any modern produc- 
tions of a similar kind in France or Italy.^ 

The admiration expressed by Flaxman for the J. Flax- 
works of Banks both indicates the tendency of his 
own art-aspirations and is an instance pleasant to 
record of the recognition by a master in sculpture of 
the deservings of a professional competitor and pre- 
decessor. The productions of Flaxman himself, a 
native of York but brought up in London, fall now 
to be adverted to. 

The father of young Flaxman was a figure-moulder 
in London, and the early education of the delicate 
and thoughtful boy consisted chiefly in modelling little 
figures and drawing, aided, in the department of 
classics and literature, by the good-natured instruction 
of some of the frequenters of his father's shop. He 
thus obtained a competent, though probably not 
critical, knowledge of Greek, which was afterwards 
turned to the best account. 

On the strength of the clever execution of a com- 
mission for six classical designs in black chalk, 
Flaxman, at the age of fifteen, was admitted a stu- 
dent in the first year of the Royal Academy's 
classes ; his first exhibited work being a figure of 
Neptune in wax. In one of the early years of the 
Academy he competed unsuccessfully with Engle- 
hurst, a student of inferior ability, for the sculpture 
gold medal. 

^ It may be thought an omission not to mention the sculptural 
work of Joseph Wilton, one of the founders of the Royal 
Academy, who was in fair employment till his death in 1803. His 
monumental sculpture is not considered to have added to the 
reputation of British art. 



428 VIEJV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iv. 

His work Undeterred by this repulse, Flaxman continued 
Wedg- his studies and labours, exhibiting models in plaster 
^^^^- at the Royal Academy exhibitions. Wedgwood 
1768. and Bentley had now commenced the ornamental 
department of their works in earthenware ; and 
bringing the art of the sculptor to bear upon that of 
the manufacturer of pottery and porcelain, they 
sought out the best modellers that could be had. 
Bacon, Webber and others, being already employed 
by them, Flaxman was also engaged to sketch and 
model for the modern Etruria. His drawings and 
modellings, for their basso-relievo ornaments, vases, 
cameo portraits, and sometimes cups and saucers, 
were chiefly taken from ancient history and poetry.^ 
One of his masterpieces in this line of art was a bas- 
relief of 'Apollo and the Muses' encircling a blue 
and white vase now in the Marjoribanks collection. 
He continued to model for Wedgwood and Bentley, 
to a greater or less extent, up to the date of his 
visiting Italy in 1787. 
Early During these years (in the course of which he was 

works!^^^ married to Miss Denman, contrary to the anti- 
matrimonial theory of the president of the Academy) 
Flaxman executed for Chichester cathedral a monu- 
ment to the poet Collins, who is represented reading 
the Bible, while his lyre and odes lie neglected ; a 
bas-relief for Gloucester cathedral to the memory of 
Mrs. Morley, in which that lady and her child (who 
both died at sea) are represented rising from the 

1 Flaxman's first bill rendered to Mr. Wedgwood (March, 1775), 
is given in Miss Meteyard's Life of Wedgwood, vol. ii. p. 322. 



CHAP. I.] SCULPTURE. 429 

waves and received by angels descending ; a monu- 
ment to the memory of Miss Cromwell, in which a 
buoyant group of angels bear up to heaven a beau- 
tiful female figure ; and a group of Venus and Cupid 
for Mr. Payne Knight.^ 

Flaxman spent seven years in Italy. At Rome 
he drew from the antique and made studies from the 
life in the city and its environs. The ancient vases Flax- 
and sarcophagi may have first suggested to him the series of 
celebrated series of designs from Homer, ^schylus {^^^'^ 
and Dante, which were executed in Rome, and con- Homer, 
tributed more perhaps than anything to develope his 
genius. They were severally commissioned by Mrs. 
Hare Naylor, the Dowager Countess Spencer and 
Mr. Thomas Hope, and were engraved by Piroli in i793-5- 
separate volumes in oblong folio. Though in the 
style of the antique, the designs have all the merit 
of originality ; Flaxman's imitation of classical art 
bearing always a reference to nature and being 
under the influence of his own imaginative and dis- 
criminative powers.^ In these truly classical pro- 

^ The sculptor's relative, Miss Denman, in a letter in the 
JBuilde?^, i^6t^, states that Flaxman's favourite works of this time 
were his monument to Collins and that to Miss Cromwell. 

2 'AUston the painter told me,' says Mr. Leslie, in his Auto- 
biographical Recollections (vol. i. p. 72), 'that, having complimented 
Flaxman on his designs from Homer, Dante, &c., the latter said, 
I will now show you the sources of many of them; and he laid 
before him a great number of sketches from nature of accidental 
groups and attitudes which he had seen in the streets and in 
rooms. I have myself seen Flaxman stop in the street to make a 
sketch of some attitude that struck him.' The late Mr. Gibson, 
R.A., in an autobiographical sketch of his student life, observes : 
' The works of Flaxman in outlines now began to delight me. I 



430 VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iv. 

ductlons our admiration is equally excited by the 
freedom and beauty of the design, the sim.plicity, 
grandeur and variety of the compositions, and the 
powerful expression conveyed with so much facility. 
And upon them, quite as much as on his executed 
works, the high reputation of Flaxman rests. 

When at Rome Flaxman executed in marble a 
group of the ' Fury of Athamas ' from Ovid's 
Metamorphoses, and a smaller group of ' Cephalus 
and Aurora' for Mr. T. Hope. The genius of 
Canova had already created and made fashionable 
in Italy a style of sculpture allied to the pure style 
of ancient art and running counter to the devia- 
tions from it introduced by Bernini and his followers. 
Resident at this time in Rome he became aware of 
the solid merit of Flaxman. When commissions 
were offered to himself by the British travellers who 
crowded his studio he was in the habit of recom- 
mending Flaxman to his countrymen, who were more 
led by fashion and report than by their own judg- 
ments ; Canova remarking with caustic humour, ' You 
English see with your ears.' 
His The commission for the monument to the Earl of 

works. Mansfield, now in Westminster Abbey, was re- 
ceived by Flaxman at Rome. It was the first of 
his works executed on his return to London, and 
was at once acknowledged to be a masterpiece. 
The venerable judge is seated between Wisdom and 

admired the beauty and purity of his female figures, and the lofty 
character of his heroes. Although he formed his style upon the 
Greek vases, his designs are full of original conceptions.' — Lady 
Eastlake's Life of Gibso?i, p. 39. 



CHAP. I.] SCULPTURE. 43 1 

Justice, with an exquisite figure of the Genius of 
Death as a youth with inverted torch in the back- 
ground. The grouping and expression of the 
figures was not less remarkable than the strict ad- 
herence to that tranquil dignity combined with 
beauty which is characteristic of first-class sculp- 
ture.^ 

As Sir Joshua Reynolds by his painting, Flaxman 
had now by his designs and sculptural works ac- 
quired a European reputation ; and his election in 
1800 to be a Royal Academician reflected at least 
equal lustre on the Academy as upon himself When 
a professorship of sculpture was instituted some 18 10. 
years after, he was the first professor appointed. 

In the case of monuments executed by him of 
historical or public interest, Mr. Flaxman was often 
hampered by conditions, and if some of those pro- 
duced by him do not come up to expectation the 
whole blame should not be imputed to the artist. 
Works of a poetical or religious character showing 
forth the virtues and graces of domestic life, and in 
which the free exercise of his own fancy and senti- 

^ Allan Cunningham, in his Life of Flaxman, alleges it to have 
been ' the practice of this eminent artist to work his marbles from , 
half-size models, a system injmious to true jjroportion.' Whether 
Mr. Cunningham's theory on this point be sound or not, the fact 
is denied by Flaxman's niece, Miss Denman, who (in the letter 
above referred to) asserts that when Flaxman wrought from half- 
size models, it was from necessity and not by choice ; that all his 
early works were modelled full size, as well as many of his later 
ones, and that the whole of Lord Mansfield's monument and 
others of the same period were modelled full size ; those only 
that required greater height than his studio admitted of being 
modelled half-size. 



432 VIEIV OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iv. 

ment was allowed him, were more congenial to his 
taste. With one or two exceptions of less success- 
Relievos, ful treatment, his basso- and alto-relievos are most 
graceful compositions, full of expression and feeling. 
The workmanship of the marble in these as in most 
of his productions is occasionally negligent, and 
made secondary to the higher qualities of the com- 
position, perhaps in too great a degree. In the use 
of the chisel it is well known that Flaxman never 
excelled. 

Among the most remarkable of his relievos is 
the family memorial of Sir Francis Baring in 
Michaeldever church, Hampshire.^ It is in three 
compartments, the subjects being taken from por- 
tions of the Lord's Prayer. In the centre, inscribed 
' Thy will be done,' is a seated female figure of 
Resignation, expressing pious tranquillity ; on each 
side an alto-relievo, the subject of the one being 
* Thy kingdom come ' and of the other ' Deliver 
us from evil.' Of these two, the first shows an 
ascending female figure supported by angels ; the 
other, a very striking group, represents a desperate 
struggle in the air between good and evil spirits for 
the possession of a man. In Michael Angelo's 
Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel a similar 
struggle is pourtrayed, with a variation in the 
grouping. This basso-relievo is one example, 
among many, of what Flaxman has done for sculp- 



^ Models of this and other works of Flaxman are now, through 
the gift of Miss Denman, accessible to visitors of the rooms in 
London University devoted to their custody. 



CHAP. I.] SCULPTURE. 433 

tural art in connexion with the ornament of church 
interiors ; all in perfect consistency with the princi- 
ples of the Reformation, his subjects being taken from 
sacred writ or chosen in accordance with its spirit, and 
not from Romish traditions or the lives of saints 
canonised in the dark ages by the Church of Rome. 

It has been well said of Flaxman by Sir Thomas Flax- 
Lawrence that the elements of his style were founded ^vL^ 
on the noblest Grecian art, ' on its deeper intellectual 
power, and not on the mere surface of its skill ; 
though master of its purest lines, he was still more 
the sculptor of sentiment than of form.' In poetical 
historic subjects his sense of beauty and grace, 
as well as of the sublime tranquillity and grandeur 
characteristic of high class sculpture, had ample 
scope for its manifestation. His Cupid and Psyche 
(done for ]\Ir. Rogers) and his Pastoral Apollo are 
fine examples, but his masterpiece in this department 
is justly considered to be the group of the ' Arch- 
angel Michael vanquishing Satan,' produced on 
commission for the Earl of Egremont, to whose 
knowledge and patronage British art has been so 
much indebted. 

It is of some interest to compare this piece of Com- 
sculpture with Raphael's picture of the same sub- ^^[^ 
ject in the Louvre. The winged Archangel of ^^P^^^^- 
Raphael, with flowing hair and scarf agitated by 
the motion of his flight, alighting upon his pros- 
trate enemy, changes in the group of Flaxman into 
a o-odlike flp'ure without wino^s, unencumbered by 
defensive armour, standing over and about to 
transfix the contorted form of Satan. The spear 

F F 



434 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iv. 

of the archangel Is similarly held In the picture 

and the sculpture, but the pose of the figures Is 

different. Although painting and sculpture have 

each but an instant of time to represent action, 

there Is more appearance of continuing movement 

and flutter in the conquering angel of Raphael and 

his various accompaniments than there Is In the 

group of Flaxman, In which force, heavenly and 

supreme, is exerted seemingly without effort. In 

the painting the treatment is picturesque and Jlam- 

boyant, while the statuary group Is marked by the 

severe simplicity of sculpture. 

In the latter years of his life Flaxman was less 

appreciated, so far as the test of commissions and 

employment goes, then his merit and well-earned 

reputation deserved. Fashion went with West- 

macott In monumental sculpture and with Chantrey 

In portrait.^ 

j^jg Among the comparatively few portrait statues 

portrait ]^y Flaxman are those of Sir Joshua Reynolds In 
statues. •' . . 

St. PauFs and of Sir John Moore on a high 

pedestal in Glasgow. The statue of the poet Burns 
in the Scottish National Gallery, which was left 
unfinished at his death, is not so favourable an ex- 
ample. Subjects more congenial to his taste and 
probably on that account better executed were the 
two small statues of Michael Angelo and Raphael 
(commissioned by Sir Thomas Lawrence) and the 
statue of John Kemble as Cato in Westminster 
Abbey. 

^ Palgrave's Essays on Art, pp. 206, 248. 



CHAP. I.] SCULPTURE. 435 

One of the most remarkable of Flaxman's per- His 
formances was his reHevo of the Shield of Achilles, Achilles, 
designed and modelled on commission for Messrs. 
Rundell and Bridge, and produced by them In silver 
gilt and also in bronze. In this astonishing work 
the various images and scenes of life represented on 
Homer's shield of Achilles, as described in the 
Iliad — from the sun-chariot in the centre to the 
ocean-border, with about a hundred human figures — 
are learnedly and beautifully modelled in relief on a 
round disc of three feet in diameter. The produc- 
tion of the work in metal was accomplished by 
Messrs. Rundell and Bridge in a style worthy of 
the subject. 

That Flaxman was a man of surpassing genius, 
and that he all but created a school of native Endish 
sculpture, is a great fact ; but admitting this fact, it 
is not quite so clear that the comparative inferiority 
of his contemporaries and successors is a proof of 
the decline of sculpture in Britain. In this art, as In 
other fields in which men exercise their faculties, the 
gift of genius Is bestowed at rare Intervals, and to 
expect a succession of sculptors such as Flaxman is 
as reasonable as it would be to expect a succession 
of Reynoldses or Wordsworths. Ideal and poetic 
sculpture has never been much in demand in Eng- 
land, portraiture being in sculpture, as in painting, 
the most profitable department of practice. With a 
precarious and uncertain demand, models and marble 
productions of poetic figures and groups often lying 
for years in his studio, the artist cannot but be 
discouraged from undertaking, to any considerable 

F F 2 



43^ 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK IV. 



Sir R. 

Westma- 

cott. 



His prin- 
cipal 
works. 



extent, laborious and expensive works. Monumental 
and historical sculpture also, of whatever kind, is 
frequently affected and unfavourably influenced by 
employers and committees, while portrait-sculpture 
is apt to degenerate into a mechanical trade. 

These considerations will in some degree account 
for the not quite satisfactory condition of British 
sculpture which a review of the chief productions of 
its professors, from the time of Flaxman till that of 
Gibson, may probably suggest. 

Sir Richard Westmacott, the son of a respectable 
sculptor in London, seems to have received his 
art-education principally in the studio of Canova 
at Rome. He was fiVQ years in Italy, and had dis- 
tinctions conferred upon him by the Academies of 
St. Luke and Florence. With fair talent and a 
knowledge of ancient art, his taste in sculpture 
formed under Canova, Westmacott soon came into 
extensive practice, especially in that monumental 
sculpture which was the result of parliamentary 
votes for memorials to soldiers, sailors, and states- 
men. He became a Royal Academician in i8i r, his 
diploma work being an alto-relievo of Ganymede. 

The elaborate statuary monuments to Mr. Pitt 
and Mr. Fox in the west end of the nave, the bas- 
relief memorial of Mr. Perceval, and the statue of 
Addison, all In Westminster Abbey, are by Westma- 
cott. His monument in the north transept to Mrs. 
Warren, a very charitable lady, has been much 
admired. It represents a way-worn female with an 
infant in her arms ; the treatment rather too pic- 
turesque for sculpture, but the execution good, and the 



CHAP. I.] SCULPTURE. 437 

flesh of the figures well contrasted with the texture 
of the drapery.^ In St. Paul's the statuary memorial 
to Sir Ralph Abercromby is the work of Westmacott ; 
also a considerable number of portrait statues in 
London and elsewhere. The bronze figure in Hyde 
Park, misnamed Achilles, was modelled by him from 
the well-known statue on the Monte Cavallo at 
Rome. This memorial-subject might with more 
propriety have been entrusted to Flaxman. 

Better productions of Westmacott in poetic sculp- 
ture were his statue of ' Cupid resting on a bow,' and 
his Psyche at Woburn. In his Euphrosyne, exe- 
cuted for the Duke of Newcastle, the beholder is 
inclined to wish for more nature and rather less 
grace or affectation of grace — tm poco della grazia 
di Parmegianiiio. 

Among Westmacott's works in relievo may be 
noted his ' Blue-bell ' — a pretty piece of decorative 
sculpture in the Ellesmere collection, the frieze on the 
north side of the marble arch in Hyde Park, and the 
sculptured pediment of the British Museum. Soon 
after the accession of Queen Victoria he became Sir 
Richard Westmacott. He was professor of sculp- 
ture at the Royal Academy in succession to Mr. 
Flaxman, up to the period of his own death in 1856 ; 
being succeeded in this chair by his son Mr, Richard 
Westmacott, R.A. 

^ When first exhibited at the Royal Academy, this monumental 
group was seen and liked by the Marquis of Lansdowne, to whom 
it was made over ; so that the group now in Westminster Abbey 
is a replica. A reproduction of it was made for the late Mrs, 
Fergusson of Raith. — Art Journal, 1849, p. 377. 



43^ VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iv. 

Portait- The works of Sir Francis Chantrey, one of the best 

of^Sir F^ employed and most fashionable portrait-sculptors of 
Chantrey. ^\^q British school, are to be seen wherever people 
' most do congregate ' throughout the British empire. 
Apprenticed In early life to a carver and gilder at 
Sheffield, he may be said to have educated himself 
In the arts of design, modelling and painting alter- 
nately. Proceeding to study sculpture in London, 
he dallied with the sister arts, hesitating which to 
devote himself to ; his biographer, Mr. Jones, inform- 
ing us that ' Chantrey always professed that every good 
statue should produce a chiar'oscuro that would be 
perfect in painting, and that the one art might be 
considered a good rule for the other in this respect' ^ 
He exhibited a bust or two at the Royal Aca- 
1808. demy and a model of a head of Satan ; but after 
modelling for five years he had met with no sub- 
stantial encouragement till he received a commission 
from an architect (Mr. Alexander) for four colossal 
heads for Greenwich Hospital of Lords St. Vincent, 
Duncan, Nelson and Howe. This led to other com- 
missions for busts, and his heads of Home Tooke, 
Lord Anglesea and Sir Joseph Banks, brought him 
additional and ever-increasing employment. 

Chantrey made occasional short visits to the Con- 
tinent and Italy, where he was elected a member of 
the Academies of Rome and Florence ; but in his 
own practice and in the advice he gave to young 
sculptors he seems to have attached little Importance 



^ Recollections of C/ia?itrey, by George Jones, R.A. ; Aj't 
Journal^ 1850, p. 45. 



CHAP. I.] SCULPTURE. 439 

to a course of study in Rome.^ Becoming in 1818 a 
Royal Academician, he was some years afterwards 
knighted. 

The works in poetic sculpture by Chantrey in- 
clude two bas reliefs from Homer, a group of ' Sleep- 
ing Children ' for a monument in Litchfield Cathedral, 
and a statue of a girl pressing a dove to her bosom, 
said to be a portrait of Lady Louisa Russell. The 
two last-mentioned works are understood to have 
been executed from the designs of Stothard.^ His 
chief practice was in busts and monumental and 
portrait statues. 

Like a skilful portrait-painter with his pictures, 
Chantrey was accustomed to abate harshness of fea- 
ture and expression, so far as he could do so without 
losing a characteristic likeness. What is perhaps less 
excusable, he occasionally gave additional promi- 
nence to a feature he wished to bring out ; as in the 
head of Sir Walter Scott, whose forehead, naturally 
elevated, was made rather more so in the bust than 
it was in reality. A good bust by him of Mr. Can- 
ning is in the National Portrait Gallery. 

Sir Francis Chantrey having so extensive employ- 
ment in portrait-sculpture, it need not excite surprise 
that much of his work, especially in his later years, 
should be of a somewhat mannered and superficial 
character. There are upwards of twelve portrait 
statues by him in London and Westminster, and 
others in various parts of the United Kingdom and 

^ Lady Eastlake's Life of Gibso?t, p. 42. 
2 Palgrave's Essays on Ai^t^ P- 36. 



440 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iv. 

in India. In the bronze statue of Mr. Pitt in 
Hanover Square, London, and at Edinburgh, while 
the attitude is dignified and expressive, the sculptor 
endeavours to blend the modern dress of the mini- 
ster with a piece of drapery neither an English cloak 
nor a Roman toga. The colossal sitting statue of 
James Watt in Westminster Abbey and the bronze 
equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington at the 
Royal Exchange are more favourable examples of 
his style.^ 
V\^. The portrait busts of William Behnes, who died 

in Middlesex Hospital in 1864, stand high in British 
sculpture. The son of a pianoforte maker, he 
began early to use his pencil in portraiture with 
what little education in drawing he could muster. 
Happening to reside In the same house in London 
with an old French sculptor, his attention was drawn 
to modelling. Swaying for some time between 
painting and sculpture, he at last adopted sculpture 
as his profession, studying at the Royal Academy, 
and continuing for a season the drawing of por- 
traits. 
His busts The power of Behnes over the plastic material 
and style. ^^^ j^jg apprehension of form is said to have been 
remarkable from the first ; his modelling being rapid, 
certain and accurate, and displaying a peculiar soft- 
ness of line and surface.^ Without much introduction 

^ For many years prior to the death of Sir Francis Chantrey in 
1 84 1 he had as his principal assistant Mr. Allan Cunningham, 
originally a practical mason, whose literary pursuits, as well as his 
ability to carry them on, were much aided by the permanent situ- 
ation he held in Chantrey's studio. 

2 Memoir of William Behnes^ in Art Journal^ 1864, j). 83. In 



CHAP. I.] SCULPTURE. 441 

in life, he was fortunate enough to commence at 
once a career of successful employment which would 
no doubt have continued, had his success not been 
interfered with by the irregularities of his life. 

One of Mr. Behnes' first sculptural works was a 1820. 
bust of the Bishop of Durham (Dr. Barrington), 
modelled and also cut in marble by himself, which 
was considered an admirable example of delicate 
chiselling. His busts of the actors Young and 
Macready, of Mr. Clarkson, Lord Lyndhurst, Dr. E. 
Stanley (Bishop of Norwich), Dr. Tait (Archbishop of 
Canterbury), Count D'Orsay, Mr. D' Israeli, and the 
Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, are regarded as emi- 
nently truthful, and at the same time distinguished, 
like most of the heads by Behnes when he had a 
favourable subject, by characteristic and elevated 
expression. His statues are not considered of equal 
merit with his busts, unless an exception be made in 
favour of the statues of Dr. Babington in St. Paul's 
and of Sir William Follett in Westminster Abbey. 
The statue of General Havelock in Trafalgar 
Square is not worthy of the sculptor. 

Thoup^h Behnes did little in what is termed Po^- 

t'T'/iiturp 01 

poetical sculpture, he had a decided esthetic feeling chiid- 
for gracefulness and beauty, coupled with a masterly 
power of representing it by form and expression. 
For this he had an apt field in the portraiture of 
childhood and youth, as in his marble statue of 
Cupid uniting two doves, exhibited in the Interna- 
tional Exhibition of 1862; in his highly finished 

the National Portrait Gallery are busts in marble by Behnes of 
Dr. Arnold, Lord Stowell, and Mr. Tierney, M.P. 



442 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK IV. 

Statue of young Lamb ton as the infant Jupiter with 
an eagle; and in his busts of the Princess (after- 
wards Queen) Victoria in her fourth or fifth year, 
and of Prince George (afterwards Duke) of Cam- 
bridge. 

Sculpture in relief Behnes does not seem to have 
practised to any great extent. The memorial to 
Dr. Bell in Westminster Abbey gracefully presents 
a party of boys standing beside their master. He 
also modelled a work in mezzo relievo, with half-size 
figures, illustrating Shakespeare^s Seven Ages of 
Man, said to be of great ingenuity and beauty, but 
never produced in marble.^ 

^ Palgrave's Essays on Art, p. 221. 



chap.il] later sculpture. 443 



CHAPTER 11. 

LATER BRITISH SCULPTURE. 

Sculptural works of Baily and Wyatt — Tendency of their 
ideal art — High promise of Musgrave L. Watson — Art- 
work of Josephs, FillanSy and Pai^k — Grecian art and 
aspirations of John Gibson — Sculpture of Spence — Mwtro 
— Macdowell. 

In the works of Edward Baily and Richard Wyatt, 
especially in those of Wyatt, the ideal or poetical 
element again displays itself, but in a manner that 
appeals rather more to the senses than to the mind. 
Baily, a native of Bristol, showed an early taste for g^ ^^Wy, 
modelling. Being allowed to follow his bent, he 
wrought a series of plaster casts from the Homeric 
compositions of Flaxman, who was so satisfied with 
the talent they displayed that he received the young 
sculptor into his studio. Here Baily continued 
about two years, attending at the same time the 
classes of the Royal Academy. His first exhibited 
work that drew much attention was a model of 
'Apollo discharging an arrow against the Greeks.' 

His ' Eve at the Fountain,' when produced in 1822. 
marble, was so much admired for its ideal beauty 
that Baily's style of sculpture may be said to 
have taken from this statue its chief subsequent 
direction. It was purchased by subscription, and is 
now in the city of Bristol. 

Mr. Baily became a Royal Academician in 1821. 



444 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iv. 

His style The severe style of Flaxman, by which his earUer 
ture^^^^' efforts may have been influenced, was now aban- 
doned for a more sensuous style that delighted in 
the softly undulating lines of the female form. The 
Venuses of Nollekens and one or two other 
statues being exceptions, there had been hitherto 
very little sculpture of this kind original in England ; 
but after the favourable reception of ' Eve,' a suc- 
cession of works by Baily followed, in which the 
purer art of his master melts into a style devoting 
itself by preference to the representation of womanly 
beauty and grace. Such were the statues of ' Psyche,' 
' Helen unveiling herself to Paris,' ' Girl preparing 
for the Bath,' ' Eve listening to the Voice ' — a com- 
panion work but not equal to the ' Eve at the 
Fountain,' and a pyramidal group of the ' Graces 
seated.' A more delicate and improved execution 
added to the effect of these luxurious marbles. 

This effeminacy of style was somewhat redeemed 
by the historical portrait statuary of Mr. Daily's 
later life, as seen in the statues of Lord Mansfield 
and Mr. Fox in the entrance hall of the Houses of 
Parliament, his seated statue of Mr. Telford the 
engineer being also a good example of his art. A 
bust in marble, by Baily, of Sir Thomas Lawrence, 
is in the National Portrait Gallery. 
Sculpture Richard J. Wyatt, a native of London, was first 
Wyatt. apprenticed to the sculptor Rossi, ^ pursuing his 

^ The performances of John Charles Rossi, an Englishman by- 
birth though of Italian parentage, do not seem to have raised or 
influenced the position of British sculpture. Mrs. Anna Dawson 
Damer was an amateur sculptor of this time, of great enthusiasm, 



CHAP. II.] LATER SCULPTURE. 445 

Studies at the same time in the Royal Academy 
classes. One or two of his models having come 
under the observation of Canova when on a visit to 
this country, Wyatt was taken by that master to 1821. 
be his scholar at Rome. A sympathy of taste in 
sculpture had brought them together, and this sym- 
pathy continued ever after to influence the style of 
Wyatt. On Canova's death in 1822 he applied 
himself to study under Thorwaldsen, only once re- 
visiting England. 

The representation of the female form and the 
expression of loveliness and grace was what chiefly 
characterised the sculpture of Wyatt ; and in this 
he took even higher honours than Baily. In the 
opinion of Mr. Gibson the sculptor, his contem- 
porary and fellow-resident in Rome, ' Wyatt had Refine- 

■^ / , "^ ment of 

acquired the purest style, and his statues were his style. 
highly finished ; female figures were his forte, and 
he was clever in composition and in the harmony of 
lines ; drapery was also a great study with him. . . . 
No sculptor in England has produced female statues 
to be compared to those by Wyatt.' ^ 

His statue of ' Musidora ' at Chatsworth is an 
exquisite and quite original work, breathing from 
head to foot the most refined feeling of ancient art. 
The ' Girl at the Bath,' though also beautiful, is 
more commonplace in character. This statue, as well 
as his ' Glycera,' ' Nymph and Cupid ' and ' Ino and 
Bacchus,' were in the International Exhibition of 

and considerable power of execution. A bust by her of George 
III. is in the Register House of Edinburgh. 
1 Eastlake's Life of Gibson^ p. 130. 



44^ VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK IV. 

1851 ; on which occasion one of the four first-class 
gold medals was awarded to his sculpture ; the 
comparatively short life of the artist having ended at 
Rome in the previous year. 

When on a visit to England in 1 841 Mr. Wyatt 
received from the Queen a commission for a statue 
of Penelope, which was executed at Rome. This 
statue is draped, the dog and bow of Ulysses being 
introduced as accessories, and Is more remarkable 
than perhaps any of his works for its simple dignity 
of air and refined taste. 

There is undoubtedly a sentiment attaching to 
' Penelope ' as in connection with the delineation of 
conjugal faith in the * Odyssey ;' but It must be said 
of the greater number of the statues of Wyatt, how- 
ever beautiful In form and of delicate finish and 
execution, and also of the female statues of Bally, 
that their peculiar merit consists rather In presenting 
a pleasing and lovely object of excitement to the 
eye and in gratifying the feeling, esthetic or other- 
wise, for what is simply beautiful, than In suggesting 
elevated sentiments and appealing to the nobler 
faculties of the soul. The observation made by 
Mr. Westmacott,^ in his lectures on sculpture, upon 
the style of Praxiteles as compared with the higher 
art of Phidias, may with little modification be 
applied to the sculpture of Wyatt and Bally : — 

* Praxiteles is spoken of by all the ancient writers as one 
of the greatest masters who has professed this art. . . . 
It cannot, however, be doubted that his peculiar merit 

^ Schools of Sadpture^ Edinburgh, 1864, p. 176. 



CHAP. II.] LATER SCULPTURE. 447 

consisted, not in the imagination or the high purpose or 
aim of his works, so much as in the exquisite perfection of 
his execution. His selection of subjects appears to have 
corresponded with the soft character and style of art to 
which he was attached ; for, although in the long list of 
works attributed to him there are numerous statues of 
nobler subjects, by far the greatest number are of Venus, 
Cupids, nymphs, and others of the class which afforded 
opportunity for the exercise of his peculiar excellence — the 
representation of richly-developed form and the delicate 
treatment of marble.' 



The premature decease of Musgrave L. Watson Promis- 
in 1847 may possibly be regarded as a check in oAius- 
the advance of British sculpture. Watson studied fy^^gon' 
at London under Flaxman, and afterwards for 
two years at Rome. Of poetical Imagination and 
eccentric character, his rising merit as an artist was 
not aided by his manners and address, and for lack 
of employment he assisted In the studio of Sir F. 
Chantrey and wrought afterwards with Behnes. 

The w^ork in poetic sculpture by which Watson 
is best known is the bas-relief from Homer of 
' Death with Sleep bearing off the dead body of 
Sarpedon,' in Avhich some discover a revival of the 
severe beauty and grand lines of the Phldlan art 
of Greece. 

His monumental bas-relief to the memory of 
Allan Cunningham at Kensal Green is a represen- 
tation of Literature or Poetry, as a seated female 
figure half-draped, pensively clasping a lyre ; quiet 
and elegant In conception and design. The prin- Qj.q,^^p ^f 
cipal achievement of Mr. Watson In portrait statuary Eidon 
is the colossal group of Lords Eldon and Stowell Stowell. 



448 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iv. 



H. Tim- 

brell. 

1846. 



Scottish 
sculptu- 
ral art. 
Samuel 
Joseph. 



1844. 



J.Fillans. 



in the library of University College, Oxford ; the 
characteristically unostentatious seated statue of 
Flaxman at London University having been also 
modelled by him. 

Henry Timbrell, an Irish artist who died early in 
life at Rome, was for some time an assistant in 
the studio of Mr. Baily, and a sculptor of great 
promise.^ For a statue now at Osborne, modelled 
by him and executed in marble for the Queen, he 
has taken a subject from Moore's ' Lallah Rookh ' 
of a Hindoo girl pouring oil into a lamp on the 
bank of the Ganges, in which the poetry of art is 
applied with chaste and refined feeling to a subject 
original and lifelike. 

The busts and a few portrait statues by Samuel 
Joseph, an English sculptor working mostly in 
Edinburgh, were much above mediocrity, and 
superior to any examples of sculptural art that had 
been produced in Scotland previous to his practice. 
Joseph's bust of the Rev. Sir Henry Moncreiff is 
a very effective portrait, and the statue by him of 
Sir David Wilkie, presented to the National Gallery, 
is a work of acknowledged merit. 

James Fillans, who died in 1852, was one of the 
first native Scotch artists who distinguished himself 
as a sculptor, practising in poetic as well as in 
portrait-sculpture. His bust of Professor Wilson, 
produced in marble for a public hall in Paisley, is a 
very characteristic likeness of Christopher North, 
and one of the best examples of Scottish art in 



^ Art Journal, 1849, p. 198; and 1855, p. 260. 



CHAP. II.] LATER SCULPTURE. 449 

portrait-sculpture. His statue of Sir James Shaw 
in Kilmarnock is also a work of merit. In the 
department of poetic sculpture a group in marble 
by him of a mother and child, in the possession of 
Mr. Napier of Shandon, is an expressive and 
tasteful composition. 

Patrick Park was another sculptor, also a native Patrick 
of Scotland, of marked power of conception and 
execution, but with a considerable tendency to the 
picturesque and extravagant in manner. His model- 
ling displayed a strong perception of character and 
skill in bringing it out, as seen in the busts of Sir 
Charles Napier (of Scinde), Napoleon HI., and 
Admiral Lord Dundoaald, which are favourable 
examples of his art. Park's appreciation of beauty 

in subjects of a more ideal kind v/as not equal to Died 

1 • • • r 1 • -1 1855. 

his appreciation of character in portrait.^ 

The art of John Gibson, R,A., was, like that of Sculptu- 
Flaxman, eminently based upon a loving and faithful of Gib- 
study of ancient sculpture. Along with this, in the 
case of Gibson as well as of Flaxman, although the 
results produced by each differed in character, there 
went a constant but discriminating reference to 
nature, whose highest types and m.ost perfect forms 
Gibson considered to be emibodied in the sculptural 
art of the Greeks. A Welshman by birth, he 
wrought for some years with the Messrs. Francis, 
marble- cutters in Liverpool. His latent talent was 
discovered by Mr. William Roscoe, who gave him 

^ For information afforded as to the productions of this and 
t other Scottish sculptors, the author is indebted to the kindness 
of Mr. W. Brodie, R.S. A., sculptor, of Edinburgh. 

G G 



450 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK I v. 

one or two commissions for bas-reliefs in terra cotta, 
taking otherwise an interest in his progress. What 
with working for the marble-cutters and the oppor- 
tunities of instruction he enjoyed through his friends 
in Liverpool, Gibson rapidly improved in the prac- 
tice of his art/ 

The young sculptor's first exhibited work at the 
Royal Academy was a bas-relief in plaster of 
^ Psyche borne by two Zephyrs,' which was noticed 
by Mr. Flaxman. In 1817 he left Liverpool for 
London, where he received several commissions 
from Mr. Watson Taylor. He was encouraged by 
Flaxman (contrary to other advice) to proceed to 
Rome, the direction in which his own wishes very 
decidedly tended. 

Gibson had the advantage at Rome of the advice 
and aid of Canova, to whom he had letters of intro- 
duction. Up to this time he had not studied in any 
academy or under any regular master.^ He was set 
by Canova to model in the life-school, and brought 
in contact with Thorwaldsen and the art-world of 
Rome. He now learned the practice and the laws 
which govern sculpture, and its comparatively limited 
range. ^ 
His early Acting upou the counsel Canova often gave, not 
^^^^^' to copy his works, but to study nature and the 
1 8 19. Greeks, Gibson modelled at Rome his group of Mars 

^ Life of John Gibson, R.A., edited by Lady Eastlake, 1870. 
Several early works by Gibson are now in the Liverpool Institu- 
tion. 

2 AutobiogTaphical Memoir in Eastlake's Life of Gibson, p. 48, 

2 Art Journal, 1849, P- ^^4°- 



chap.il] later sculpture. 451 

and Cupid, produced in marble for the Duke of 
Devonshire ; for whom also a bas-relief of the meet- 
ing of Hero and Leander was executed two years 
after. A group in marble of Psyche and the Zephyrs 
was a commission from Sir George Beaumont. The 
statue of 'Paris' (now at Kinfauns Castle, Perth- 
shire), a graceful and beautiful work of careful 
and fine execution, was produced in marble for 1834. 
Mr. Watson Taylor. The group of Hylas and 
the Nymphs, now in the National Gallery, was 
executed for Mr. Vernon. From the rather dispro- 
portionate size of the Nymphs and being placed 
very near the spectator, this work does not perhaps 
convey so favourable an impression as might be 
wished of the sculptor's style. -^ 

It is very obvious in these earlier works of Gibson 
that he eschewed novelty of subject, however he 
may have displayed originality in the treatment. He 
drew his inspiration from the ancient mythology and 
the ' gods of Greece,' passionately lingering, as Keats 
did in poetry, within their domain of serene beauty. 
His intense delight in the beautiful was gratified by 
his study of those to him always charming subjects. 

After the death of Canova, and having, as it were. More- 
fairly measured his own strength, Gibson allowed \^-^J 
himself more scope in the choice of subjects. His subjects. 
' Sleeping Shepherd ' and ' Cupid disguised as a 

' In the folio volume of works composed and executed by Mr. 
Gibson, published at London in 1 861 by Colnaghi & Co., from 
drawings by Guglielmi, his statues, groups, and bassi-relievi 
are rendered in outline as effectively as such works can be ren- 
dered by engraving. 

G G 2 



.^ 



ment. 



452 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book IV. 

Shepherd,' from the Aminta of Tasso, were favourites 
both in England and America, and were several 
times repeated. The group of the ' Hunter and 
Dog,' which was in the International Exhibition of 
1 85 1, the statue of the ' Wounded Amazon ' at Eaton 
Hall, the bas-relief (in plaster) of ' Eteocles and 
Polynices with Jocasta intervening,' were works of 
more originality, the attitudes and expressions taken 
from incidents and persons observed by himself in 
the streets of Rome. 
Their It must be admitted that in point of elevated 

send- sentiment and thought the sculpture of Mr. Gibson 
is inferior to that of Flaxman ; yet in some of his 
works very refined sentiment is discoverable. In 
his ' Cupid caressing a Butterfly while preparing 
to pierce it with an Arrow,' he embodied the sen- 
timent of Love tormenting the soul ; ' Eros and 
Anteros contending for the Soul ' typified the con- 
test between earthly and celestial love ; a bas-relief 
in memory of four children of Mr. Bonomi, who 
all died in one week, shows an angel plucking 
flowers, while another angel holds the flowers in his 
hand. His bas-reliefs of a monumental character 
generally convey some sentiment of Christian faith 
or practice simply and beautifully suggested. A 
model of a wounded warrior with a female figure 
tending his wound was left unfinished at the sculptor's 
death. 

Of his bas-reliefs of poetical subjects produced in 
marble the two belonging to Earl Fitzwilliam of the 
' Hours leading the Horses of the Sun,' and ' Phaeton 
driving the Chariot of the Sun,' are among the 



CHAP. II.] LATER SCULPTURE. 453 

finest.^ Much of his ideal sculpture is, like this, my- 
thological—a kind of sculpture devoid of interest to 
some people, but not so to Gibson, who entered con 
amore into the inner life and soul of the mythical 
beings he impersonated. Such subjects as ' Pro- 
serpine gathering Flowers on the Plains of Enna,' 
* Aurora alighting on the Earth to bathe it with Dew,' 
the Goddess of Love in mortal form, full of sweetness 
and grace, he dreamed of by night and pondered 
over by day. 

It may be doubted whether the celebrated Venus Gibson's 
(first executed for Mr. Neeld) is one of Gibson's ^'^^'''• 
best works. The attitude was suggested by his 
having ' often remarked that ladies when holding a 
fan or any light rbject generally place their hands 
in repose in front of the person,' ^ — a somewhat arti- 
ficial theory for a statue of Aphrodite. Of this 
work he made several repetitions, that for Mrs. 
Preston of Liverpool being the most elaborate, and 
remarkable as the first marble statue to the flesh 
of which the sculptor applied colour ; having pre- 
viously applied it in a slight degree to the drapery 
and accessories of his statue of her Majesty.^ 

^ Were it justifiable to bring the mocking muse of Byron to 
illustrate what is meant to be a representation of earnest and pure 
sentiment, Gibson's beautiful group in relievo of ' Cupid and 
Psyche on a Couch ' (the centre and only portion executed of a 
design for the nuptial Feast of Cupid and Psyche) might be 
described by the distich — 

And thus they form a group that's quite antique — 
Half- naked, loving, natural and Greek. 

2 Eastlake's Life of Gibson., p. 209. 

3 Canova is believed to have introduced colour in some of his 



454 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART [BOOK IV. 



Colour- 
ing of 
statues. 



* When this replica was finished/ says Mr. Gibson, 
' I took the liberty to decorate it in a fashion un- 
precedented in modern times.' The flesh was tinted 
like warm ivory, the eyes blue, the hair blond ; the 
ornaments being of gold and the borders of the 
drapery tinted. The sculptor was so charmed with 
his workmanship that he would hardly allow the 
statue, after retaining it several years in his studio, 
to be sent to the owner. -^ 



works, applied to the cheeks and lips. — Westmacott's Schools of 
Sculptii7'e, p. 326. 

^ Autobiographical Journal, in Lady Eastlake's Life of Gibsoti. 
' When all my labour was complete,' the sculptor writes, ' I 
often sat down quietly and alone before my work, meditating upon 
it and consulting my own feelings. I endeavoured to keep myself 
free from self-delusion as to the effect of the colouring. I said to 
myself, Here is a little nearer approach to life, it is therefore more 
impressive ; yes, yes indeed she seems an ethereal being, with her 
blue eyes fixed upon me ! At moments I forgot that I was gazing 
on my own production. There I sat before her long and often. 
How was I ever to part with her?' This singular passage in 
Mr. Gibson's diary will recall to the classical reader the story of 
Pygmalion and his ivory statue (Ovid, Mctam. x. 8) : — 

Miratur et haurit 
Pectore Pygmalion simulati corporis ignes ; 
Ssepe manus operi tentantes admovet, an sit 
Corpus an illud ebur : nee ebur tamen esse fatetur. 

The life-like form Pygmalion still admires, — 

Within his breast arise unwonted fires. 

Full oft his hands the polished ivory press ; 

If flesh it is or no he strives to guess ; 

That nought but ivory 'tis he will not yet confess. 

It may be remarked that in this fable the poet makes no allu- 
sion to colour having been applied to the ' snow-white' ivory figure, 
which evidently is supposed to be a completed work. The con- 
cluding lines of the fable, where the ivory virgin is made to blush 
at the sight and tlie kisses of her lover, points to a natural colouring 
upon the statue being endued with life by the Paphian goddess, 
and is inconsistent with the notion of the statue having been the 
subject of artificial colouring. 



CHAP. ii.J LATER SCULPTURE. 455 

Gibson's passion for colouring grew upon him as 
he advanced in Hfe. He defended it by the alleged 
practice of the Greeks — a practice which in the case 
of marble portrait statues is not considered to have 
been satisfactorily^ proved. In England the colour- 
ing of statues has not been received with favour 
either by sculptors or by the public generally. It 
seems to be inconsistent with the severity and sim- 
plicity of sculpture, and to be a return in another 
shape to a picturesque and meretricious style of art.-^ 

In the department of portrait-sculpture ]\Ir. Gib- classical 
son's classical taste in the practice of his art was ment of 
pushed to an extreme. He had no toleration po^^^^^t 

^ ^ ^ statues. 

for modern coats and neck-ties, and his portrait 
or ' Iconic ' statues were all treated classically and 
arrayed in what he regarded as proper sculptural 
costume. His statue of Mr. Huskisson, executed 
in bronze, now in front of the Custom-house at 
Liverpool, was draped in a toga or mantle, and had 
the arms and right shoulder and bust uncovered ; 
an excess of classicism which caused considerable 
discussion, and did not meet with general approval. 
The marble statue of ^Ir. Huskisson, placed at the 
entrance of Lloyds', Royal Exchange, and one of 
Sir Robert Peel in Westminster Abbey, are similarly 
treated, except that in both the right arm and shoulder 
only are undraped, as great a concession probably 
in point of costume as the sculptor was inclined to 

^ In the International Exhibition of 1862 there were three 
coloured statues by Gibson — the Venus mentioned in the text, 
Pandora, and Cupid. The two last were the property of Lady 
Marian Alfcrd and of Mr. Holford. 



456 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [BOOK iv. 



Statue 
of the 
Queen. 



Group in 

Princes' 

Chamber. 



make. These statues are in their attitude tranquil 
and dignified. Another of his principal Iconic 
sculptures is the marble statue of Stephenson, the 
engineer, in St. George's Hall, Liverpool, also clas- 
sically treated ; what he proposed to himself as 
to the expression of this statue being to give his 
subject a look capable of action and energy, but con- 
templative and quiet, as most suitable for marble. 

Gibson applied the same principles to the few 
portrait busts he executed as to his statues. His 
bust of the Duchess of Wellington had a more serious 
air than some of her grace's friends approved of, 
the sculptor holding an expression of commonplace 
cheerfulness and gaiety to be beneath the dignity of 
his art. 

The commission for the statue of the Queen (now 
at Buckingham Palace) was received during Mr. 
Gibson's visit to England in 1844. To his great 
relief her Majesty had no objection to Greek 
drapery, which is indeed more susceptible of adap- 
tation to female costume. This statue is distin- 
guished by its natural grace and dignity, the 
expression of royalty being conveyed in the look 
and action, without the usual symbols of sovereignty. 
It was executed at Rome, the diadem, sandals, and 
borders of the drapery being tinted with blue, red, 
and yellow. 

The chief later work of Gibson was the group 
in the Princes' Chamber at Westminster, of the 
Queen seated between the standing figures of Justice 
and Mercy, with relievos on the pedestal. This 
masterly group has an air of placid grandeur. Justice 



CHAP. II.] LATER SCULPTURE. 457 

being marked by an expression of determination, 
Mercy by one of sympathy and sadness. 

Mr. Gibson was a member of several foreign 
Academies, and although domiciled in Rome was 
elected a member of the Royal Academy of 1833. 
London. He was on the best terms with all his 
brethren of the Academy, to whom, on his death at 
Rome in 1866, he bequeathed the bulk of his 
fortune and the entire contents of his studio. 

Mr. E. B. Spence, who practised mostly at Rome, Spence. 

was a pupil of Gibson. After Wyatt's decease he ^^^^ 
. . . . 1^66. 

occupied the studio of that sculptor in Rome, finish- 
ing a considerable number of his incomplete works. 
The son of a sculptor at Liverpool, Spence proceeded 
early in life to Italy, and receiving commissions 
from Lancashire and other places, executed them in 
Rome. His style of ideal art was more picturesque His pic- 
and less refined than that of either Gibson or Wyatt. art. 
Among his most notable productions are ' Highland 
Mary,' 'Lavinia,' and two statues of ecclesiastics 
in their gowns in St. George's Hall, Liverpool. 
His group of four figures, the ' Finding of the 
Infant Moses,' is a work evincing talent and power 
of expression and execution, though pictorial in 
treatment and deficient in sculptural simplicity of 
manner. 

The beginning of the year 1871 witnessed the 
death at Cannes of Alexander Munro, a native of Alex- 
Scotland, whose productions were very favourably ^unro. 
known when his health unhappily gave way. In- 
troduced early in life to Sir Charles Barry by the 
late Duchess of Sutherland, he was engaged for a 



458 



V/EIV OF LITERATURE AND ART [book iv. 



His art 

and 

works^ 



1758-69. 



P. Mac- 
dowell. 



1837. 



short time in carving some of the works in the 
Houses of ParHament, to which he contributed a 
statue of Queen Mary (Tudor), He exhibited at 
the Royal Academy busts of Sir R. Peel and 
others. 

As a sculptor of children and also of female por- 
traits, whether in the round or in relievo, Munro 
especially excelled ; that refinement of sentiment and 
aesthetic feeling for grace and beauty which was 
native to him showing itself thoroughly in his work. 
For the Museum at Oxford he executed statues of 
Hippocrates, Galileo, Davy, and James Watt; also 
colossal statues of Watt at Birmingham, and of 
Mr. H. Ingram at Boston. Mr. Munro's exhibited 
works in the International Exhibitions of 1851 and 
1862, although they did not escape criticism, were 
upon the whole well received, and were remarked 
for their refinement of character and careful treat- 
ment. One of the earliest modelled of these, Paolo 
and Francesca, was put in marble for Mr. Gladstone. 
Later exhibited works of Munro were the * Lovers' 
Walk' and 'Undine;' the 'Young Hunter' and 
' Joan of Arc ; ' a ' Sleeping Boy,' and an alto-relievo 
of the Duchess of Vallambrosa. The Fountain- 
nymph in Berkeley Square, London, is also a work 
of Munro. 

Patrick Macdowell, a native of Ireland, held a 
good position as a sculptor of portraits as well as 
of ideal subjects. His model of a ' Girl Reading,' 
exhibited at the Royal Academy, gained him favour- 
able notice from Sir James Tennant, and an intro- 
duction to Mr. T. W. Beaumont, M.P., for whom 



CHAP. II.] LATER SCULPTURE. 459 

he produced this statue in marble. Busts of Sir 
James and Lady Tennant were followed by por- portrait 
trait busts of Lord Dufferin, Alderman Cubitt, and ^^"^^fuer"^ 
Mr. Whiteside. Among his most noted Iconic 
statues were two statues in bronze of the Earl of 
Belfast and of Lord Fitz^ibbon. erected the one at 
Belfast and the other at Limerick, and two marble 
statues of Lord Chatham and ]\Ir. Pitt for the En- 
trance Hall of the Houses of Parliament.^ 

Without anv verv elevated sentiment or feelinof. 
Macdowell's works in poetic sculpture were mostly pjjg -^^^^^ 
of the kind already referred to Avhen noticino- the sculpture. 
productions of Baily and Wyatt. as devoting itself 
chiefly to the representation of the female form. 
They were not equal in style to the masterpieces of 
those sculptors, but sufficiently attractive to the 
popular eye. Such were his ' Girl going to the 
Bath/' ' Eve/ and the " Triumph of Love.' executed 
for Ylv. Beaumont. His statue of ' Early Sorrow,' 
a girl weeping for a dead bird, is a subject of no 
great originality either in conception or treatment. 
One of this sculptor's best productions in ideal art 
is the group of \'irginius and his Daughter, in which 
the forms are well contrasted. 



* The statues in the Entrance or St. Stephen's Hall, of the 
Palace of VVestminsterj executed by British artists, are as follows : 
Selden and Hampden, by J. H. Foley, R.A. : Lord Falkland, Sir 
Robert Walpole, by John Bell ; Lord Clarendon, Lord Somers, by 
W. C. Marshall, R.A. : Lord Chatham, Mr. Pitt, by P. Mac- 
dowell, R.A. ; Lord Mansfield, Mr. Fox, by E. H. Baily. R.A.; 
]Mr. Burke, bv W. Theed : :Mr. Grattan. bv L. Carew. 



460 



VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book iv. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



Difficul- 
ties sculp- 
ture has 
to en- 
counter. 



The Historical View of British literature and art 
which has been given in the preceding pages deal- 
ing mainly with the past, it would be going beyond 
its scope to speculate on the probable future of 
Literature, or of Architecture, Painting and Sculp- 
ture. In the case of literature, architecture and 
painting, such speculation is less called for, inasmuch 
as they are plants now thoroughly rooted in the soil 
of Britain, and, although subject always to influences 
of a prosperous or adverse kind, running no risk 
in the meantime of their vitality being seriously 
checked. They will now pursue respectively their 
course under as favourable auspices and with as 
favourable results as circumstances, tim.e and chance 
may permit. Sculpture is in a somewhat different 
position. Its existence as an art of native English 
growth, dating from the time of Flaxman and his 
contemporaries, hardly extends to a hundred years, 
and its progress during the latter portion of the time 
has not in all respects been so satisfactory as to put 
the permanent well-being of the art, in its right and 
true form, beyond question. 

British sculpture has difficulties to encounter 
peculiar to itself, arising partly from conditions 
Inherent in the practice of the art, partly from the 



CHAP. II.] CONCLUDING REMARKS. 46 1 

defective encouragement and patronage awarded to 
its professors, and the state of the pubHc taste. Com- 
pared with the wide range of painting in point of 
variety of subject and of treatment, the range of 
sculpture is extremely limited. Beauty and dignity 
of outward form, with what addition of sentiment 
and expression the nature of the subject admits and 
the genius of the artist can supply, is the foundation 
and nearly the sum and substance of all sculptural 
art ; while the qualities of style most requisite for its 
treatment are simplicity, gracefulness, and severity. 
To derive pleasure from and heartily appreciate 
results of art-work produced under these conditions 
requires a certain training both of mind and eye, 
w^iich the great majority of the purchasers of objects 
of taste have not as yet deemed it necessary to 
acquire. Fully appreciating the variety and fasci- Painting 
nating qualities of the sister art of painting, they atfr^tiv^e 
give it a decided preference, and purchase pictures ^'^^' 
to an immeasurably greater extent than they do 
sculpture. Painting is the more brilliant and gene- 
rally attractive art ; and it not unfrequently happens 
that this popular delight in and acceptance of paint- 
ing, acting (perhaps unconsciously) upon a sculptor 
desirous of selling his works, is the cause of sculpture 
being produced of which the character and treatment 
is picturesque rather than sculpturesque. 

But such a state of things is adverse to the subject 
healthy progress of the art. For the production of ^^.-^^^^ 
sculpture of a true and elevated and enduring' kind, ^ the range 



^ KTr\\xa eg alei. 



462 VIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. [book IV. 

of sculp- what is essentially required is a choice of subject 
and ^^'' within the limits of sculptural art, and a simple and 
appro- severe (though it may be less popular) treatment, 
treated, suitable to the subject, and consistent with the 
principles and laws of the best Greek examples and 
of nature. 

In all sculpture, whether portrait or ideal, not 
only the modelling but the production in marble or 
bronze of what has been modelled involves an 
Skill and expenditure of skilled labour and capital calling- 
required perhaps for more consideration on the part of the 
ture^^ P" patrons of art than is sometimes accorded. And 
this applies to portrait-sculpture, to life-size busts 
and statues, as well as to Iconic and ideal statues, 
groups and large relievos. Portrait-sculpture, like 
portrait-painting, may be apt in some hands to run 
into a mechanical or conventional manner ; but, 
when faithfully executed, a portrait bust or statue 
has in it so much genuine application of truthful 
work and study of expression, that its production 
first in the clay and afterwards in marble under the 
sculptor's superintendence and with his finishing 
touches, is a real and a valuable work of art. Ideal 
statues and small reliefs and medallions have likewise 
their own value as productions of art. 
State Sculptural work of a more important kind, as 

age^of' large Iconic statues, groups and relievos, implies the 
sculptu- exercise of a liberal patronage often beyond the 
means of private individuals. And here the State 
(when not influenced by views of economy carried 
to excess) may lend its aid with considerable effect 
on the occurrence of a fittino- occasion, such as the 



CHAP. II.] CONCLUDING REMARKS. 4^3 

building and recent decoration of the Houses of 
Parliament. Looking to what has been done in 
that direction, it cannot be denied that the statues 
especially in the Entrance or St. Stephen's Hall, 
and the group of her Majesty supported by Justice 
and Clemency in the Princes' Chamber, are worthy 
results of State patronage of art. In the case 
of sculptural works of a monumental character, 
the exercise of patronage, whether by Parliamentary 
committees or by committees of private subscribers, 
is always liable to be attended with difficulties, to 
overcome which there will be required on the part 
of employers a spirit of fairness and impartiality 
directing their proceedings, and on the part of 
artists moderation and discretion. 



INDEX 



ADA 

ADAM, Robert and James, architects 
of the Adelphi Terrace buildings, 
242. The screen of the Admiralty ; 
Caemvood in Middlesex, &c. 243 

Adam, ^Yilliam, built Hopetoun House, 
Linlithgowshire, 242 

Adams', John, translation of Ulloa's 
'Voyage to South America,' 236 

Addison, made secretary of state, 2. 
Poetical epistle addressed to Lord 
Halifax from Italy, 18. ' Cato,' 181. 
'Rosamond,' 197. ' Spectator,' 206. 
' Whig Examiner ; ' 'Medley;' 'Re- 
marks on several Parts of Italy and 
Switzerland in the Years 1701, 1702, 

1703,' 233 

Adolphus, ' Histor}' of the Reign of 
George III.,' 40 

Akenside encouraged by Pope, 78. 
' Pleasures of Imagination ; ' ' Odes,' 
80 

Alison, Sir Archibald, ' History of 
Europe during the French Revolu- 
tion,' 40. ' Histor}' of Europe from 
the Peace, 1815,' 41 

Allan, David, Scotch painter, 375 

Allan, Sir W., painter, travels in Russia, 
&c. ; works, 362, 363. Elected an 
R.A. ; president of Scottish Aca- 
demy, 363 

Amhurst, Nicholas, ' Terrae Filius ; ' 
' Craftsman,' 208 

Angerstein, John Julius, his pictures 
purchased to form the nucleus of a 

. National Collection, 340, 341 

Anne, Queen, Augustan age of, 6. 
Reform in dramatic literature, 177 

Anson, George, ' A Voyage round the 
World,' 235 

Arbuthnot, Dr., deprived of office of 
court physician, 2. ' Law is a 
Bottomless Pit, or the Histor>' of 
John Bull ; ' remarks of Sir W. Scott 
on his ' John Bull,' 207 



BAG 

Architects, foreign, employed in early 
Tudor buildings, 12 

Architecture, Palladian or Italian style, 
9, 239 etseq. Early English or Gothic 
style ; Romanesque style ; Norman 
st}de ; Pointed Gothic, 10. Gothic 
common to France and Germany as 
well as to England, 12. Pure Greek 
style ; Roman, 247. The Greek be- 
came practically kno\Mi in England, 
248. Difficulties in its adoption, 249. 
Buildings erected in the Greek style, 
250, 251. Want of sculptural deco- 
ration, 251. Street architecture in 
London, Edinburgh, Bath, 253. 
Gothic revival ; Gothic style depre- 
ciated by men of taste, 257, 258. 
Ignorance in architects of its rules 
and details, 260, Improved study 
and style in Gothic, 261, 262. Eccle- 
siastical buildings, 262. Defence of 
Gothic builders having recourse to 
early examples, 262 {note). Early 
English secular buildings ; Italian 
ornamentation in reigns of Henry 
VIII. and Elizabeth, 264. Secular 
Gothic architecture, 264-5. New- 
Houses of Parliament — Tudor Gothic, 
265, 267, Country mansions, 270 

Argyle, John, Duke of, monument in 
Westminster Abbey by Roubillac, 23 

Armstrong, ' Art of Preserving Health,' 
81 

Art, two modes of pursuing it, 1 7 

Ascham, Roger, Life by Dr. Johnson, 
42 

Austen, Miss Jane, ' Sense and Sen- 



sibihty, 



Pride and Prejudice 
Persuasion,' 66 



Mansfield Park ; 



Emma ; ' 



B 



ACON, John, sculptor, 23. Re- 
ceived first gold medal awarded 



H H 



466 



INDEX. 



BAC 

for sculpture by Royal Academy, 423. 
Monumental group to memory of Lord 
Chatham, and other works, 424 

Bacon, Lord, ' History of Henry VII,' 
27 

Baillie, Joanna, plays, 190 

Baily, Edward, R.A., 443. His 'Eve 
at the Fountain,' 443. Female statu- 
ary ; historical portrait statuary, 444. 
Style, 444-6 

Baker, Sir Samuel, travels in Africa, 
236 

Bank of England, an example of Greek 
architecture, 249 

Banks, Thomas, R. A., early reputation, 
24. Goes to Italy as travelling 
student, 424. His sculpture of a 
poetical character ; works, 425, 426, 
Highly regarded by Flaxman, 426 

Bamaby, Dr. , ' Travels in North 
America,' 236 

Barret, early exhibitor at Royal Aca- 
demy, 285, 299 

Barry, James, historical painter, his 
career, 319. 'Death of Wolfe;' 
Adelphi pictures, 321, 322 

Barry, Sir Charles, architect, 266, Park 
front of Bridgewater House, London, 
253. His taste, and subordination of 
ornament to the general design ; his 
chief works, 267. New Houses of 
Parliament, 267, 268 

Bath, architecture of, 253 

Beattie, Dr. James, ' Minstrel,' 95, 
' Essay on Truth,' 222 

Beaumont, Sir George, offers to be- 
queath to future National Gallery his 
own collection, 340. Patron of 
native artists, 400 

Beaumont, dramas, 174 

Beddoes, Mr. T. L,, 'Maid's Tragedy;' 
'Death's Jest-Book,' and poems, 191 

'Bee,' the, 216 

Beechey, Sir W., R. A., portrait painter, 
patronised by royal ty^ 334. His 
works mediocre, 334 

Beeckman, Captain Daniel, 'Voyage 
to the Island of Borneo,' 235 

Behnes, W. , portrait-sculpture and style 
of, 440. His chief works ; portraiture 
of childhood, 441, 442 

Bell, John, of Antermony ; ; ' Travels 
from St. Petersburg to divers parts of 
Asia,' &c. 235 

Benson, installed in "Wren's office of 
surveyor of the Royal Buildings ; 
commemorated in the Dunciad, 16 

Bentley, opinion of Pope's Homer, 77 



BUR 

Bernini, bust in marble of Charles I,; 
his faulty manner, 22 

BickerstafF, ' Love in a Village,' 198 

'Blackwood's Magazine,' 221 

Blake, William, designer, colourist, and 
engraver, 310. ' Songs of Innocence 
and Experience ; ' ' Illustrations of 
Book of Job ; ' collection of his works 
in British Museum, 311. His eccen- 
tricity, 312 

Bloomfield, ' Farmer's Boy,' 109 

Boileau, influence of, on Pope and his 
school of poetry, 6 

Bolingbroke, Lord, * Letters on the 
Study of History,' 28. ' Examiner,' 
206. 'Craftsman,' 208 

Bond, ' Plain Dealer,' 207 

Bonington, R. P. , landscapes and coast 
scenery ; influence of his style upon 
French painters of landscape; stay 
at Venice, 399. Works, 400 

Book -illustration, 306 

Booksellers, patrons and masters of 
literary men, 4 

Bos, Abbe du, assertions as to aesthetic 
art in England, 18 

Boswell, ' Life of Johnson, ' 43 

Bowles, Rev. W. Lisle, sonnets, chiefly 
interesting for having given rise in 
part to the more powerful verse of 
Coleridge and Wordsworth, 103. 
' St. John in Patmos,' ' Cid,' &c. 104 

Boydell, Alderman, his Shakespeare 
Gallery, 326, 327 

Bray, tour in Derbyshire and York- 
shire, 234, 246 

British Museum, only five readers in 
July, 1759, 4. The building a speci- 
men of Greek temple architecture, 
249. Dome reading-room, 250 

Britton, John, 'Architectural Antiqui- 
ties of Great Britain ; ' ' Cathedral 
Antiquities of England,' 261 

Brodie, work on English history, 40 

Bronte, Charlotte, novels, 70 

Brougham, Lord, praise of Hume, 31. 
'Edinburgh Review,' 218 

Brown, W. G., 'Travels in Africa, 
Egypt, and Syria,' 236 

Brown, Sir Thomas, -life by Dr. John- 
son, 42^ 

Brown, Lancelot, landscape gardening, 
246. Introduced in Cowper's 'Task,' 
246 

Bruce, ' Travels in Abyssinia,' 236 

Buckingham, Duke of, 'Rehearsal,' 
174. Picture of, by Egg, 385 

Burke, Edmund, ' Vindication of Na- 



IXDEX. 



467 



BUR 

tural Society ; ' ' On the Sul)lime and 
Beautiful ; ' ' Reflections on the 
French Revolution,' 222, Letters, 
231. His character of Reynolds, 287 

Burleigh House, 1 1 

Burlington, Earl of, taste in architec- 
ture ; patron of Kent, architect ; 
ridiculed in two satirical prints by 
Hogarth, 241 

Bumes, Sir Alexander, ' Travels into 
Bokhara,' etc.; 'Personal Narrative 
of a Journey to, and Residence in, the 
City of Cabool,' 235 

Burnet, * History of Reformation in 
England ; ' ' History of his Own 
Time,' 28 

Burney, Miss, 'Evelina,' admired by 
Burke, Johnson, and Sir J. Reynolds, 
60. 'Cecilia,' praised by Burke; 
' Camilla,' 61 

Burns, freedom from school of Pope, 8. 
Life by Currie, 45. Life by Lock- 
hart, 45. Poems published by sub- 
scription, 1786, 98, Flattering notice 
of him in the ' Lounger,' by Mack- 
enzie ; characterised by Wordsworth, 
99. * Cotter's Saturday Night ; ' 
' PI alio ween ; ' 'Tam o' Shanter;' 
beauty of his lyrics ; ' Scot's Musical 
Museum ; ' Thomson's collection of 
'Original Scottish Airs,' 100 

Byron, Lord, 'English Bards and Scotch 
Reviewers,' 153. Personal nature of 
his poetry, 153, Foreign tour with 
Hobhouse, 154. ' Childe Harold,' 
reflecting poet's life, 155. First and 
second cantos of ' Childe Harold ; ' 
* Giaour ; ' ' Bride of Abydos ; ' 
'Corsair;' 'Lara,' 155-6. Other 
poems; lines to 'Augusta,' his sister, 
158. 'Don Juan,' 159. Prophecy 
of Dante ; subject suggested by 
Countess Guiccioli, 160. The 'Is- 
land,' 161. Death in 1824, 162. 
His dramas not intended for repre- 
sentation, 191. 'Manfred,' 'Werner,' 
&c. ; ' Mysteries of Cain,' ' Heaven 
and Earth,' 193. Correspondence, 
232 



CAIUS COLLEGE, 11 
Callcott, Sir A. W., R.A., coast 
scenery ; occasional portraits ; land- 
scapes ; character of his painting, 401 
Cambridge, R. O., contributions to the 

'World,' 214 
Campbell, Lord, 'Lives of the Lord 



CLA 

Chancellors' and of 'The Chief Jus- 
tices of England,' 46 

Campbell, Thomas, * Pleasures of 
Hope;' 'Battle of Hohenlinden ;' 
' Gertrude of Wyoming,' and other 
poems, 147, 148. Ode on John 
Kemble, 187 

Campbell, architect, author of ' Vitru- 
vius Britannicus,' 240 

Canning, writings in ' Antijacobin,' 62, 
218. 'Microcosm,' 218. 'Quar- 
terly Review,' 219 

Cave, Edward, ' Gentleman's Maga- 
zine,' 209 

Centlivre, Mrs., comic dramas, 179 

Chambers, Sir William, architect of 
Somerset House, 242. ' Treatise on 
Civil Architecture,' 247. His ap- 
preciation of Gothic buildings, 259 

Chambers, R,, authority on Scottish 
ballads, 112 

Champagne, Philip de, portrait-views 
for bust of Cardinal Richelieu, 22 

Chantrey, Sir Francis, R.A., portrait- 
sculpture ; colossal heads for Green- 
wich Hospital ; visits to the Con- 
tinent and Italy, 438. His extensive 
practice ; busts of Scott and Canning, 
439. Other works, 439-40 

Charles I., great promoter of art, 19 

Chatterton, Thomas, ' Poems of Row- 
ley,' 94 

Chesterfield, Earl of, ' Common Sense,' 
209. Contributions to the ' World,' 
214. Letters to his son, 226 

'Chevy Chase,' praised by Addison in 
' Spectator,' iii 

Churchill, Rev. Charles, satirical poems 
— ' Rosciad,' in which he attacks 
actors of the day ; ' Prophecy of 
Famine;' 'The Ghost,' attacking 
Dr. Johnson under name of Pom- 
poso; 'Epistle to Hogarth,' 81. 
Denounced as a poet by Goldsmith ; 
alluded to by Cowper in 'Table 
Talk,' 82 

Cibber, Colley : the ' Careless Hus- 
band,' 194. The 'Non-Juror;' cre- 
ated Poet Laureate ; ' Provoked 
Husband,' 195. Gibber's manage- 
ment of Druiy Lane satirised by Pope 
and Hogarth, 196 

Cibber, foreign sculpturing work in 
England, 22 

Cicero, life by Middleton, 42 

Clapperton, ' Narratives of Travels and 
Discoveries in Northern and Central 
Africa,' 236 



468 



INDEX. 



CLA 

Clarendon, Lord, ' History of Civil 
War,' 28 

Clarke, Dr. Edward, 'Travels,' 234 

Claude, imitations of, by native artists, 
18 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, early poems 
(1796) and odes, 129. ' Ancient Ma- 
riner,' &c., published in Words- 
worths's ' Lyrical Ballads ;' notice of 
'Ancient Mariner' in letter of Rev. 
Alexander Dyce to late Mr. H. N. 
Coleridge, 130. 'Remorse;' trans- 
lation of Schiller's ' Piccolomini ' and 
' Death of Wallenstein, ' 131. ' Chris- 
tabel ;' ' Sibyline Leaves,' 132. Ex- 
amples of his shorter poems, 133-6 

Coleridge, Hartley, poems, 142 

Collier, ' Short View of the Immorality 
and Profaneness of the English 
Stage ; ' its effect on the drama, 177 

Collins, William, R.A., landscape pic- 
tures of English life; ' The Pet Lamb, ' 
&c., 398. Visit to Italy, 399 

Collins, the poet, his emancipation 
from school of Pope, 8. ' Oriental 
or Persian Eclogues;' 'Odes,' 89. 
remark of Coleridge on ' Ode on 
the Poetical Character,' 90 

Colman the Elder, ' Clandestine Mar- 
riage,' 199. 'Jealous Wife,' 200. 
Contributions to 'Connoisseur,' 216 

Colman the Younger, ' Heir-at-Law,' 
205 

Congreve, his 'Mourning Bride,' 175. 
' Love for Love ;' ' Double Dealer ;' 
his style, 176 

'Connoisseur,' the, 216 

Constable, John, original character of 
his painting, 390, 392. Not appre- 
ciated in his lifetime; works, 391. 
Receives gold medal from King of 
France, 392. His expressive style, 392 

Cook, Captain, voyages, 235 

Cooper, Samuel, 19, 414 

Copley, John Singleton, R.A., por- 
traits ; historical paintings of a por- 
trait character, 317-18. ' Death of 
Chatham,' 316. 'Death of Major 
Pearson ; ' Admiration of First Duke 
of Wellington for fight represented in 
picture, 318 

Cooper, Samuel, v^ater-colour minia- 

, tures, 19 

Cooper, American novelist, 70 

Corice, the Earl of, contributions to 

' Connoisseur,' 216 
Coverley, Sir Roger de, observation 
on the city churches, 14 



DAW 

Cowley, Mrs., the 'Belle's Stratagem,' 
204 

Cowper, emancipation from school of 
Pope ; inbred reverence for him, 8. 
Character of writers of Queen Anne's 
reign in 'Table Talk,' 9. Life by 
Hayley, 45. ' Table Talk,' &c., 95. 
' The Task, ' first suggestion of, by 
Lady Austen, 96. 'John Gilpin,' 
97. Translations of 'Iliad' and 
' Odyssey,' 97. Contributions to 
' Connoisseur,' 216, Letters, 231 

Coxe, Archdeacon, letters to William 
Melmoth, 226. ' Travels in Switzer- 
land and Northern Countries of Eu- 
rope,' 234 

Crabbe, Rev. George, poems — * Ine- 
briety;' the 'Library;' 'Village,' 
revised and lauded by Dr. Johnson ; 
the 'Newspaper;' 'Parish Register,' 
10 1. 'Borough,' &c. ; influence of 
residence and surroundings on 
Crabbe' s poetry, 102, Its character, 
102 

Craik, ' English Literature and Lan- 
guage,' 7 

'Critical Review,' the, 211. 

Croker, J. Wilson, ' Quarterly Re- 
view,' 219 

Cumberland, Richard, plays — ' West 
Indian ;' ' Wheel of Fortune,' 204. 
The 'Observer,' 217 

Cunningham, Allan, poems, 142. Lives 
of painters, 325 

Currie, ' Life of Bums,' 45 

Curzon, Hon. Mr., 'Visit to the Mon- 
asteries of the Levant, ' 234 



DACRE, Lady, fashionable novels, 
71 
Dalrymple, Sir David (Lord Hailes), 

annals of Scotland, &c. 38, Con- 
tributions to the 'World,' 214 
Danby, F. , painter of striking effects ; 

' Upas Tree,' and other works, 403-4. 

His peculiar manner, 404 
Dance, George, city architect, built 

Newgate Prison ; Mansion House, 

242 
Dance, Sir Nathaniel, portrait painter, 

334 
D'Arblay, Madame (Miss Burney), 

diary and letters, 232 
D'Avenant, Sir William, satirised by 

Buckingham in ' Rehearsal,' 174 
Dawkins, illustrations of Palmyra and 

Baalbec, 247 



INDEX. 



469 



DAW 

Dawson, James, execution of, 211 

Dedications, practice of, laudatory, 3 

Defoe, 'Robinson Crusoe,' &c. 1719- 
1729, 6. Principal fictions in form 
of autobiographies, 48. Their cir- 
cumstantiality, 49, 50, ' Memoirs 
of a Cavalier ; ' ' Life and Piracies of 
Captain Singleton ; ' * Life and Ad- 
ventures of Colonel Jack ; ' ' For- 
tunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flan- 
ders ; ' ' Journal of the Plague Year, 
1665,' 49, Pamphlets, 207 

Delia Cruscan School, origin ; names 
of members, 104. Description by 
Horace Walpole ; Letter of Lady 
Miller to Dr. Whalley, 105. Speci- 
men of their poetry ; ridiculed by 
Gifford in ' Baviad ' (1791), 106 

Denham, ' Narratives of Travels and 
Discoveries in Northern and Central 
Africa,' 236 

Dickens, subject of writings generally 
middle or lower walks of life, 72 

Dobson, William, painter of life-sized 
portraits in oil, 19 

Drake, Dr. Nathan, ' Literary Hours,' 
218. Essays, 223 

Drama, retrospective glance at, 173. 
Time of Charles II. and William III., 
1 76. Collier's exposure of its license; 
partial reform of, in reign of Queen 
Anne, 177. Comedies of Steele, 178. 
Of Farquhar, Vanbrugh, and Cibber, 

1 79. Predominance of classical style, 

180. Imitations of French plays, 
182. Lillo's domestic tragedies, 184. 
'Douglas' and other tragedies, 185-94. 
Revival of tragedies of Shakespeare 
and the older dramatists, 187. Ger- 
man influence, 188. Recurrence to 
old English models, 189. Genteel 
comedy, 194. Low ebb of comic 
drama, 196. Pantomime and Italian 
Opera in vogue, 197. Low comedy, 
199. Comedie larmoyante ; co- 
medies of Goldsmith, Sheridan, and 
others, 200 

Drumlanrig, II 

Dryden, Life, by Sir Walter Scott, 45. 
Rhyming heroic plays ; satirised 
by Buckingham, in 'Rehearsal,' 174. 
His later plays more natural ; lines 
from epistle to Congreve, 175 

Dudley, first Earl of ; letters to the Bishop 
of Llaaidaff, 232 

Duncan, T., A.R.A. , his portrait- 
painting, 346. Painter of historical 
and poetical subjects, 364 



FAS 

Dyce, W., R.A., studies in Italy ; 
works, 365. Pamphlets on manage- 
ment of schools of design ; appoint- 
ment as secretary and director of 
schools in London at Somerset House, 
366. Oil paintings, 367, Fresco- 
painting in the Houses of Parliament, 
&c., 367-369 



EASTLAKE, SirC, pupil of Royal 
Academy ; residence in Italy and 
Greece ; works, 360, 361. Director 
of National Gallery ; president of 
Royal Academy, 361 

Edgeworth, Maria, ' Castle Rackrent ; ' 
' Belinda ; ' opinion of Miss Edge- 
worth in respect to novels of the 
period, 63. ' Popular Tales ;' ' Moral 
Tales ; ' ' Tales of Fashionable Life; ' 
' Patronage,' &c. ; influence on Scott, 
64. Her novel -writing, 65, Essay 
on ' Irish Bulls,' 223 

' Edinburgh Review,' 218 

Egg, A. L., R.A., works : sensational 
subjects, 385. Execution and colour- 
ing good, 386 

Ellis, George, Rolliad, Probationary 
Odes for the Laureateship, 109. 
' Quarterly Review,' 219 

Elmes, Harvey L., architect of St. 
George's Hall, Liverpool, in Grecian 
style, 251 

'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' 224 

Engraving, 415, 416 

Epistolary style, 225 

Erskine, Dr. John, colleague and op- 
ponent of Dr. Robertson, 31 

Etty, William, R. A. , student of Royal 
Academy, 353. More appreciated by 
artists than by the public ; his studies 
in Venice ; large historical works, 
acquired by Scottish Academy, 354-5. 
Other works, 356 

Evelyn, entries in diary as to ' Hamlet ' 
and ' Indian Queen,' 174. ' Account 
of Architects and Architecture,' 258 

' Examiner,' supported by writings of 
Swift, Prior, Lord Bolingbroke, 206 



FALCONER, ' Shipwreck,' 92. 
Lines addressed by Coleridge to 
a lady with ' Shipwreck,' 92 
Farquhar, George, ' Constant Couple ;' 
' 13eaux Stratagem ; ' * Recruiting 
Officer,' 179 
Fashionable novels, description of, 71 



470 



INDEX. 



FEM 

• Female Spectator,' 211 

Fenton, Miss, in 'Beggar's Opera,' 197 

Ferguson, Dr. Adam, ' History of the 
Roman Republic,' 38 

Fergusson, 'History of Architecture,' 261 

Ferrier, Miss, ' Marriage ; ' ' Inherit- 
ance ; ' ' Destiny,' 70 

Fielding, made a Justice of peace, 2. 
Dedication of ' Tom Jones ' to Hon. 
G, Lyttelton, 3. His principal novels 
written during the reign of George II., 
6. 'Joseph Andrews,' written in 
ridicule of 'Pamela,' 53. Imitation 
of Cervantes, 53. 'Tom Jones;' 
'Amelia;' 'Jonathan Wild,' 54. 
Allusion of Gibbon in his autobio- 
graphy to Fielding and Tom Jones, 
54. Comparison of Fielding and 
Smollett, 55. Jeu d' esprit in reference 
to ' Dunciad ' in Covent Garden 
Journal, 77. The ' Miser ; ' ' Tom 
Thumb ;' ' Mock Doctor,' &c., 198. 
Periodical writing in ' the Champion; ' 
praises ' Tatler ' and ' Spectator,' 
210. ' True Patriot ; ' ' Jacobite 
Journal,' 211 

Fillans, James, poetic and portrait 
sculpture, 448 

Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, Life by 
Moore, 45 

Flaxman, J., a student at Royal 
Academy, 427. Models for Wedg- 
wood ; early sculptural works, 428. 
Visits Italy ; series of designs from 
Homer, &c., 429. Principal works, 
430. European reputation, 431. 
Relievos, 432. His style ; compari- 
son of his ' Michael vanquishing 
Satan ' with Raphael, 433. Portrait 
statues, 434. Shield of Achilles, 435 

Foote, Samuel, comedies, 199 

Forbes, President, statue of, in Parlia- 
ment House, Edinburgh, by Rou- 
billac, 23 

Fox, C. J., ' History of the Reign of 
James II.,' 39 

Francis, Sir Philip, 'Letters of Junius,' 
226 

Francklin, Captain W., 'Tour from 
Bengal to Persia,' 235 

Franklin, Sir J., narratives of expedi- 
tions conducted by, 236 

Frederick the Great, Life by Dr. John- 
son, 42 

French Revolution, 62, 112 

Frere, John, 'Microcosm,' 218 

Fuseli, historical painter, 326. Leaning 
to the mystical and extravagant ; 



GIB 

Shakespeare pictures, 327. * Titania 
and Bottom ; ' ' Hamlet and the 
Ghost ; ' Milton pictures, 328 



GAINSBOROUGH, early exhibitor 
at Royal Academy, 285. Por- 
trait-painting, 290. Landscapes, 
292, 301, 302. Colouring; picture 
of Mrs. Siddons, the ' Blue Boy,' &c. 
291. Cottage Children, 302. Looked 
to general effect, 302 

Gait, ' Annals of the Parish ; ' ' Entail,' 
70 

Gardening, landscape, 244. Italian 
and Dutch taste, 245. Modem Eng- 
lish, 245-6 

Garrick, in 'Lear,' 'Othello,' 'Richard 
III.' 187. Comic pieces, &c., 199 

Gay, secretary to Lord Clarendon : 
poems published by subscription, 2. 
' Shepherd's Week ; ' theory of pas- 
toral poetry, 74, 75. 'Beggars' 
Opera,' 197 

Geddes, Andrew, A.R.A,, Scotch 
painter of portraits and fancy sub- 
jects, 346 

' Gentleman's Journal,' 2 16 

' Gentleman's Magazine,' 209 

George I. and George II. had little 
regard for literature and the arts, i 

George III., patron of art ; preferred 
Zoffany, Ramsay and West to Rey- 
nolds, and Zucharelli and Barrett to 
Wilson and Gainsborough, 285 

George IV., first suggestor of the pur- 
chase of the Angerstein pictures for 
a national collection, 340. Patronised 
Lawrence, 339. And Wilkie, 360 

German literature, influence on English 
poetry, [12 

Gibbon's remarks on Hume and Robert- 
son ; ' History of the Decline and Fall 
of the Roman Empire,' 34. Covert 
attack on Christianity, 35. His mode 
of composition, 36. Letters from Dr. 
Robertson to Gibbon on the ' Decline 
and Fall,' 37. Autobiography, 43 

Gibbs, James, architect of Radcliffe 
Library, Oxford; St. Martin's-in-the- 
Fields, London, 240 

Gibson John, R.A., sculptural art of, 
449. Studied with Canova and Thor- 
waldsen, 450. Early works, 451. 
Variety in his subjects, 451. Their 
refined sentiment, 452. Relievos ; 
tinted Venus, 453. His admiration 
of it, 454. Colouring of statues, 454. 



INDEX. 



471 



GIF 

Portrait sculpture, 455. Statue of 
the Queen, and Group in Princes' 
Chamber, 456. 

Gifford, 'Baviad and M?eviad,' 106. 
* Antijacobin,' 218, Editor of ' Quar- 
terly Review,' 219 

Gilbert, John Graham, R.S.A., por- 
trait painter ; superiority of his fe- 
male portraits, 348 

Gillies, ' History of Greece,' 39 

Glover, ' Leonidas,' 80 

Godwin, ' Caleb WiUiams,' ' St. Leon,' 
62 

Goldsmith, 4, 8. Histories of Greece 
and Rome, 39. ' Vicar of Wake- 
field,' 57. Mention of it by Goethe, 
58, Domiciliated in England, 58. 
'Traveller,' 58. ' Deserted Village, ' 
94. 'Good-natured Man;' 'She 
Stoops to Cono^uer,' 201. 'Monthly 
Review, '21 1. ' Bee ; ' ' Public Led- 
ger ;' 'Gentleman's Magazine,' 216. 
' Citizen of the World,' 226 

Gordon, Sir J. Watson, president of 
Scottish Academy ; his characteristic 
portraits of men ; rejection of orna- 
ment, 347. Receives medal at Paris 
Exhibition of 1855, 348 

Gore, Mrs., fashionable novels, 71 

Graham, James, 'The Sabbath,' 109 

Graham, John, master of Trustees' Aca- 
demy, 347. 'Disobedient Prophet,' 
362 

Gray, his letter to Horace Walpole in 
1737,5. Life by Mason, 45. Odes, 
90. ' Elegy in a Country Church- 
yard' superior to his Pindaric Odes — 
the ' Progress of Poetry ' and ' The 
Bard,' 91. Letters, 229. Letters 
from Turin, from Glamis Castle, 
230. Appreciation of scenery, 230. 
Depreciates Gothic structures at Cam- 
bridge and elsewhere, 258, 259 

• Grub Street, Memoirs of the Society 

of,' 209 

* Guardian,' 206 



HALL, Captain Basil, 'Journal 
written on the Coasts of Chili, 
Peru, and Mexico ; ' * Voyage to Loo 
Choo,' &c., 236 
Hallam, ' View of the State of Europe 
during the Middle Ages ; ' ' Consti- 
tutional History of England,' &c., 39 
Hamilton, Lady, model for many of 
Romney's pictures ; mention of her 



HOG 

acting the ancient statues by Horace 
Walpole, 295 

Hamilton, Elizabeth, ' Memoirs of 
Modem Philosophers ; ' ' Cottagers of 
Glenburnie,' 63 

Hamilton, Thomas, architect ; designed 
the High School, Edinburgh, in the 
Greek style, 250 

Hanover, House of, accession, I 

Hardwicke's, Lord, observation on 
works in form of letters, 232 

Hatfield House, II 

Hawkesworth, Dr., the ' Adventiirer,' 
213 

Hawksmoor, Nicholas, pupil of Sir 
Christopher Wren, 239 

Haydon, B. R., historical painter, 349. 
Personal failings ; ' Judgment of 
Solomon;' 'Raising of Lazarus,' 
350. His account of the disposition 
of his pictures ; suicide, 351 

Hayley, ' Life of Co\vper,' 45 

Hayward, Sir John, 27 

Haywood, Eliza, 'Female Spectator;' 
the ' Parrot,' 211. News-letters, 211 

Hazlitt, W., essays, &c., 224 

Heber, Bishop, poems, 109 

Henry, ' Histoiy of Great Britain,' 38 

Herbert, Hon. and Rev. W., ' Trans^ 
lations from the Norse,' &c., 142 

Heriot's Hospital, 11 

Hibernian Academy, 403 

Hill, Aaron, ' Zara ; ' ' Merope,' 182. 

Hillyard, painter of water-colour minia- 
tures in reign of Elizabeth, 19 

Hilton, William, historical painter, pur- 
chase by British Institution of picture 
of ' Mary anointing the Feet of Jesus;' 
' Rape of Europa,' and other pic- 
tures ; high character of his art ; bad 
condition of his pictures, 352 

History, few native writers of, before 
Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon, 27 

Hoadly, Dr., the ' Suspiciovis Hus- 
band,' 200 

Hobhouse, Sir John C, (Lord Broughton). 
' Journey through Albania and other 
Provinces of Turkey,' 234 

Hogarth, attacked in ' North Briton,' 
publishes portrait of Wilkes; and 
portrait of 'the Bruiser, Charles 
Churchill,' &c., 81, 280. ; Illustra- 
tions of ' Don Quixote ; ' ' Gulliver's 
Travels ; ' ' Hudibras ; ' ' Harlot's 
Progress ; ' ' Rake's Progress,' 276. 
' Marriage a la Mode ; ' best pictures 
sold with difficulty ; ' Battle of the 
Pictures,' 277. ' Industry and Idle- 



472 



INDEX. 



HOG 

ness ; ' ' Beer Street and Gin Lane ; ' 
the * Election ' series ; * Modem Mid- 
night Conversation ; ' 'Strolling Ac- 
tresses Dressing in a Barn,' &c., 278. 
Character of his art, 276, 280. Un- 
successful in historical painting ; por- 
traits of Mr. and Mrs. Garrick, &c., 
279. Hogarth's engraving, 277, 416 

Hogg, 'Queen's Wake,' 142 

Holbein, historical British portraits, 19 

Holland, architect, 254 

Holland House, ii 

Hollinshed, Chronicles, 27 

Home, John, ' History of the Rebellion 
of 1745,' 39. 'Douglas,' 185. Plot 
suggested from Percy's Reliques, 186. 
Persecuted by the church-courts {note), 

1 8a 

Hook, Theodore, domestic novels, 71 
Hoppner, John, portrait painter, friend 
of Gififord, 334. Formidable com- 
petitor to Sir T. Lawrence ; his 
works, 336 
Horace, Satires and Odes, 79 
Howard, Sir Robert, satirised by Buck- 
ingham in 'Rehearsal,' 174 
Hudson, mannerism in painting, 20 
Hughes, 'Siege of Damascus,' 183 
Hume, David, ' History of England,' 

29. Its character, 31. His politics, 

30. Autobiography, 43. Essay on 
' Simplicity and Refinement,' 183. 
'Essays,' 221. Letters, 231 

Hunt, Leigh, ' Legend of Florence,' 
191. Essays, 224 



'■ TDLER,' the, 213 
j[ ' Intelligencer,' weekly paper, by 
Dr. Thomas Sheridan and Swift, 
plan of, 208 



JACKSON, John, portrait painter, 
excellent colourist, 336. Portraits 
of Canova, Flaxman, &c. 337 
Jacobite Ballads, 1 1 1 
James I., increased tendency to Italian 

style in reign of, 1 1 
James, G. P. R,, historical romances, 

70 
Jamieson, Scotch artist and pupil of 

Rubens, 19 
Jansen, historical British portraits, 19 
Jeffrey, Lord, opinion of novels of 
commencement of 19th century, 63. 
' JEdinburgh Review, '218 



KIN 

Jenyns, Soame, contributions to the 
'World,' 214 

Jervas, mannerism in painting, 20 

Johnson, Dr., scholars life, 4. Influ- 
ence of Pope on his poetry, 8. 
Praises 'Knolles' History of the 
Turks,' 28. Lives of Savage, Sir 
Thomas BroAvn, Frederick the Great, 
Roger Ascham ; ' Lives of the Poets,' 
42. Life by Boswell, 43. Rasselas, 
57. Translated into German, 58. 
On Poetry of Pope, 73. ' London ;' 
' Vanity of Human Wishes ;' imita- 
tions of Juvenal, 79. Prologue 
spoken by Garrick, 177, 182. 'Irene,' 
183. ' Gentleman's Magazine,' 209. 
'Rambler,' 211, 222. 'Idler,' &c., 
213. 'Journey to the Western Is- 
lands,' 234 

Johnson, James, ' Scot's Musical Mu- 
seum,' 100 

Jones, George, R. A. , painter of battle- 
pieces, 360 

Jones, Inigo, flourished in reigns of 
James I. and Charles L; Wilton 
House, in Wiltshire, one of his best 
designs, 12. Designs for palace of 
Whitehall, 13 

Jonson, Ben, plays, 174 

Joseph, Samuel, busts and portrait sta- 
tues, 448 

Junius, letters of, 226 



KAUFFMAN, Angelica, 285, 332 
Kean, actor, 188 
Keats, his early training, 166. Inspira- 
tion from ancient mythology ; son- 
nets ; miscellaneous pieces ; reply to 
a query of Leigh Hunt ; ' Why en- 
deavour after a long poem?' 167. 
' Endymion ; ' ' Lamia ; ' ' Isabella,' 

168. 'Eve of St. Agnes,' and other 
pieces ; study of early English poets, 

169. Treatment by ' Quarterly Re- 
view,' 170. ' Ode on a Grecian Urn,' 
171 

Kelly, comedy of ' False Delicacy,' 
201 

Kemble, John, acting of, 187 

Kent, William, architect, 241. Patro- 
nised by Earl of Burlington ; front 
and colonnade of Burlington House, 
Piccadilly ; park front of Treasury 
buildings at Whitehall, &c., of his 
design; ridiculed by Hogarth, 241. 
Landscape gardening, 246 

Kinglake, ' Eothen,' 235 



INDEX. 



473 



KNE 

Kneller, historical British portraits, 19; 
a falHng off from the portraits of 
Vandyke, 20 

Knolles' ' History of the Turks,' 27 

Knowles, Sheridan, 'Virginius,' 191. 
'Hunchback,' 'Love-Chase,' &c., 
205 

Knox, Dr. Vicesimus, 'Essays,' 'Win- 
ter Evenings,' &c., 218 

Knox, ' History of the Reformation in 
Scotland,' 28 

Kotzebue, plays of, 188 



LA GUERRE, florid allegories 
painted on ceilings, &c., 17 

Laing, David, authorship of Scottish 
Ballads, III 

Lamb, Charles, essays, 224 

Lamb, Hon, William, 'Epilogue to 
Pizarro,' 189 

Lander, Richard and John, ' Journal of 
an expedition to explore the course 
and termination of the Niger, 236 

Landscape painting, 298, 389 

Landseer, Sir Edwin, his genius has 
raised animal painting into a higher 
region of art, 305 

Lauder, Robert Scott, R.S.A., Scotch 
painter ; works, 364 

Lawrence, Sir T., precocious talent; 
early portraits ; painter in ordinary 
to the king, 337. Portraits of John 
Kemble, Windsor portraits, &c., 338- 
9, His drawing superior to his 
colouring, 338. His painting ad- 
mired on the Continent ; elected Pre- 
sident of Royal Academy ; assists in 
formation of National Gallery, 340 

Lawrence, Dr. French, ' Rolliad, Pro- 
bationary Odes for the Laureateship,' 
109 

Lee, ' Rival Queens, or the Death of 
Alexander the Great,' 175 

Leland 'History of Ireland,' 39 

Lely, historical British portraits, 19. 
Affectation in attitude ; voluptuous 
air in female portraits, 20 

Leo the Tenth, Life by Roscoe, 44 

Leyden, John, poetry, 142 

Leslie, R. A. , pupil of Royal Academy, 
381. Works, their character, 382, 

383 

Lewis, M. G., 'Monk,' in manner of 
Mrs. Radcliffe, 60. 'Tales of Won- 
der,' 109 

Lillo, struck out new path in tragedy, 
183-4. ' George Barnwell,' 184. 



MAC 

' Fatal Curiosity ; ' ' Arden of Fever- 
sham,' 184-5 

Lingard, 'History of England,' 39 

Lister, fashionable novels, 71 

Livingstone, Dr., Travels in Africa, 
236 

Lockhart, ' Life of Sir Walter Scott ; ' 
'Life of Burns,' 45, 'Valerius,' 
70. Editor of ' Quarterly Review,' 
219. ' Lettei's to his Kinsfolk by 
Dr. Peter Morris,' 226 

' London Magazine,' 224 

' Lounger,' The, 217 

Lovelace in ' Clarissa Harlowe,' drawn 
from Lothario of Rowe's ' Fair Peni- 
tent,' 52 

Lyttelton, Hon. George, Fielding's 
'Tom Jones' dedicated to, 3. 'His- 
tory of King Henry IL,' 38 

Lytton, Lord, Comedy of Walpole, 2. 
Subjects of his novels, 72 



MACAULAY, Lord, ' History of" 
England from the Accession of 
James II.,' 41. Essays contributed 
to 'Edinburgh Review,' 219 
Macculloch, R. S. A., distinguished land- 
scape painter, 407, 408 
Macdowell, Patrick, 458. Portrait busts 
and statues ; his ideal sculpture, 

459 

Mackenzie, ' Man of Feeling ; ' ' Man 
of the World ; ' ' Julia de Roubigne ; ' 
beautiful story of La Roche, intro- 
ducing sketch of Hume^ &c., 62. 
Contributions to ' Mirror ' and 
' Lounger,' 217 

Mackenzie, Sir George Stewart, travels 
in Iceland, 234 

Mackintosh, Sir James, the ' Vindicise 
Gallicse,' 222 

Macklin, ' Man of the World,' 200 

Maclise, Daniel, R.A., works, 370. 
Style ; fresco painting in Palace of 
Westminster, 37 1, Method of stereo- 
chrome adopted, 372. ' Meeting of 
Wellington and Blucher ;' * Death of 
Nelson,' 373 

Macpherson, Jarnes, ' History of Great 
Britain from the Restoration, 38. 
' Ossianic poetry ; ' delighted the 
first Napoleon, 92. His poetry 
whether genuine ; testimony of Lady. 
Christian Grceme, 93 

Macready, efforts to revive the better 
days of the drama, 188 



474 



INDEX. 



MAL 
Malcolm, Sir John, ' History of Persia,' 

39 

Marlborough, ridiculed in Dr. Arbuth 
not's parody, ' Law is a Bottomless 
Pit, &c.,' 207 

Marryatt, Captain, novels, 71 

Martin, J., original genius, 401. 'Bel- 
shazzar's Feast ; ' Sir David Wilkie's 
remarks on ' Belshazzar ; ' works ; 
compositions grand but exaggerated, 
402 

Mason, ' Life and Writings of Gray, ' 
45, 91. Poems ; Heroic Epistle to 
Sir W. Chambers ; Odes to Sir 
Fletcher Norton and others, 109. 
' Elfrida ; ' ' Caractacus,' 183 

Massinger, plays, 174. ' Fatal Dowry,' 
180 

Mathias, ' Pursuits of Literature -, ' 8, 
108. Compliments Roscoe, 44 

Maturin, Rev. R. C, 'Bertram,' 190 

Maxwell, Sir W. Stirling, ' Cloister Life 
of the Emperor Charles V.,' 32 

McCrie, Dr. Thomas, ' Histories of the 
Progress and Suppression of the Re- 
formation in Italy, and in Spain,' 40 

Medici, Lorenzo de, Life by Roscoe, 44 

* Medley,' Addison and Steele chief 
contributors to, 206 

Melmoth, ' Letters on several Subjects 
by Sir Thomas Fitzosbome,' 225 

Mezzotinto engraving, 417, 418 

' Microcosm,' the, 218 

Middleton, Dr. Conyers, ' Life of 
Cicero,' 42 

Miller, his play of ' Mahomet,' 182 

Milman, Rev. H., poems, 142. 'Fazio,' 
190 

Milton, in ' Treatise of Education ' cha- 
racterises poetry as distinguished from 
logic, 73 

'Mirror,' the, 217 

Montagu, Lady M. W. , letters, 229 

Montgomery, James, poems, 109 

Moore, Thomas, ' Life of Lord Byron ; ' 
Lives of Sheridan and Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald, 45. 'Laliah Rookh,' 143. 
Imbued with Orientalism ; its glitter- 
ing style, 143-4. 'Loves of the 
Angels ; ' ' Irish Melodies ; ' other 
poems, 145. Specimen of poet's 
manner, 146. The ' Epicurean, ' 70. 
Correspondence, 232 

Moore, Edward, 'Zeluco,' 61. 'The 
Gamester,' 185. Principal contri- 
butor to the ' World,' 214 

Morier, ' Zohrab,' * Ayesha,' and other 
novels, 70 



NOL 

Morland, George, painter of homely 
scenes and rustic landscapes, 302. 
His animal -painting, 303. Opinion 
of Sir David Wilkie on visiting pic- 
tures by Morland, 303. Pictures of 
an ale house debauch, &c. ; paints in 
prison ; death by fever ; Hassell's 
anecdote of copies from his pictures, 

304 
Mortimer, J. H,, historical painter; 
Salvator Rosa-like manner, 323. 

* Death on the Pale Horse ; ' ' Marius 
among the Ruins of Carthage ; ' 
etchings, 324 

Morton, ' Cure for the Heart-ache ; ' 

* Speed the Plough,' 204 

Miiller, William, travels in Europe and 
the East ; excellent pictures of groups 
of figures and scenery ; works, 384 

Mulready, William, R.A., a thorough 
draughtsman ; his Academy studies, 
378. Domestic subjects ; estimate 
of his painting, 379 

Munro, Alexander, Scotch sculptor ; 
his art and works, 457—8 

Mure, Colonel, ' Journal of a Tour in 
Greece and the Ionian Islands,' 234 

Murphy, A., 'Way to keep Him;' 'AH 
in the Wrong,' 200 

Mytens, historical British portraits, 19 



NAPIER, Sir William, 'History 
of the War in the Peninsula,' 
40 
Napier, Macvey, editor of ' Edinburgh 

Review,' 218 
Nash, architect, 254 
Nasmyth, Alexander and Patrick, 
paintings of rural scenery, &c., 404, 

405 
National Gallery, origin of, 340, 341 
Neale, John Preston, ' Views of Coun- 
try Seats in England, Wales, Scot- 
land, and Ireland,' 243 
'Necromancer,' the, 183 
Nelson, Lord, Life by Southey, 44 
' New Monthly Magazine,' 221 
Newton, Gilbert Stuart, R.A., excel- 
lent colourist ; works, 380. Style, 
&c., 381 
Newton, Sir Isaac, statue by Roubillac 

at Cambridge, 23 
Nightingale, Lady Elizabeth, monu- 
ment in Westminster Abbey by Rou- 
billac, 23 
Nollekins, Joseph, R.A., busts; po- 
etical statues, 421^422. Studie.s in 



INDEX. 



475 



NOR 

Italy, 421. Modelling from nature, 

422 
Norman aixhitecture, 10 
Normanby, Marquis of, fashionable 

novels, 71 
'North British Review,' 221 
Northcote, R.A., 330. Anecdote of 

Pope and Reynolds,' 7. Painter of 

historical subjects and portraits ; 

* Murder ' and ' Burial of the Princes 

in the Tower ; ' 'Death of Wat 

Tyler,' 330 
Novel writing, 47 et seq. 



o 



LIVERS, the two, water-colour 
miniatures, 19, 414 



Opie, J,, R.A., 330. His effective 
style ; portraits ; historical composi- 
tions, 331 

Orme, ' History of Transactions in 
Hindostan,' 39 

Otway, 'Orphan;' ' Venice Preserved,' 

175 

Owen, William, portrait painting, 336 
Oxford University, attacked by Nicholas 
Amhurst, 208 

PAINTING in oils, British school 
of, commenced with William 
Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and 
Richard Wilson, 17, 275. Painting in 
water-colours, 302, 393, 414 

Palladian style of architecture in Eng- 
land, 9, 239, 240, 243, 252 

Palladio, his school of architecture, 247 

Panizzi, Mr., reading-room of British 
Museum, 250 

Park, Mungo, ' First and Second Travels 
in Africa,' 236 

Park, Patrick, Scotch sculptor, his 
works, 449 

Parr, Dr., compliments Roscoe, 44 

'Parrot,' the, 211 

Parry, narratives of expeditions con- 
ducted by, 236 

Pennant, ' First and Second Tours in 
Scotland,' 234 

Pennethome, Sir James, architect of 
London University building in Bur- 
lington Gardens, 255 

Percy, ' Reliques of Ancient English 
Poetry,' iii 

Phillip, John, R.A., student at Royal 
Academy ; Scottish pictures, 386. 
Residence in Spain ; Spanish pic- 
tures, 387-8. ' Marriage of the 



PRI 

Princess Royal ; * character of his 
paintings, 387 

Phillips, Ambrose, patronised by Go- 
vernment, 2. ' The Free Thinker,' 
208 

Phillips, T., R.A., careful portrait 
painter and colourist; portraits of Lord 
Byron and Sir Francis Burdett, 336 

Pindar, Peter (Dr. John Wolcot), poems; 
' Lyric Odes to the Royal Academi- 
cians,' 109, 289, 301, 333 

Pinkerton, works on Scottish history, 39 

Playfair, William, architect, 243. De- 
signed Royal Institution and Scottish 
National Gallery, Edinburgh, in the 
Grecian style, 251. Street architec- 
ture, 254 

Poetry, characteristics of, 73. Decline 
of classical, advance of romantic 
school, 1 10. Causes influencing new 
direction of poetical taste, ill. In- 
fluence of study of German literature, 
112 

Pope, his school of poetry partly in- 
fluenced by Boileau, &c., 6. Sway in 
the realm of letters, &c., 7, 8. Curious 
description of old country house in 
letter to Lady M. W. Montague 
(1 718), 10. Epistle to Earl of Burling- 
ton, 244. Pupil of Jervas in portrait 
painting ; friend and patron of Rich ; 
ardson, portrait painter, 20. ' Me- 
moirs of P. P., Clerk of this Parish,* 
28. ' Pastorals or Eclogues,' 74, 
' Essay on Criticism ; ' ' Messiah ; ' 
' Early imitation of Virgil,' 75. 
• Windsor Forest ; ' ' Ode for music 
on St. Cecilia's Day ; ' ' Elegy to the 
Memory of an Unfortunate Lady ; ' 
' Rape of the Lock ; ' characterised 
by Addison as merum sal, 76. 
' Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard ; ' re- 
mark on himself and epistle ; trans- 
lation of Homer ; ' The Dunciad,' 
allusion to, in Fielding's jeu d' esprit^ 
in Covent Garden jfournal, 77. 'Essay 
on Man ; ' ' Epistles ' to various per- 
sons ; two ' Dialogues ; ' his poetry 
of two kinds, 78. Warton's conclu- 
sion as to his poetry, 79. Prologue 
to 'Cato,' 180. Letters, 228. Their 
manner, 229 

Porter, Sir Robert Ker, ' Travelling 
Sketches in Russia and Sweden,' 234 

Poussin, imitations of, by native artists, 
18 

Price, Sir Uvedale, ' Essays on the Pic- 
turesque,' 223, 245 



476 



INDEX. 



PRI 

Prior, Matthew, conducted negotiations 
for treaty of Utrecht ; poems pub- 
lished by subscription, 2. 'Examiner,' 
206 
Procter (Barry Cornwall), poems, 142 
'Public Ledger,' the, 216 
Pugin, the elder, architect, 261 
Pugin, the younger, architect, 261. 
Assists Sir Charles Barry in decora- 
tion, external and internal, of Houses 
of Parliament, 267, 268 
Purdon, Edward, 4. Translated the 
' Henriade,' 4 

' y<->wUARTERLY REVIEW,' 219 

RADCLIFFE, Mrs., 'Mysteries of 
Udolpho ;' ' Romance of the 
Forest ;' ' Itahan,' 60 

Raeburn, Sir Henry, R.A., study of 
Reynolds, 343. Portraits, their style, 
344. Resemblance to Velasquez ; 
knighted by George IV., 345 

Raleigh, 'History of the World,' 27 

* Rambler,' 211 

Ramsay, Allan, poems, 6. ' Gentle 
Shepherd,' 86. Its popularity in 
Scotland, London and Dublin ; how 
it differed from the conventional style 
of Pastoral and from ' Shepherd's 
Week' cf Gay, 87 

Ramsay, son of poet, portrait painter ; 
portraits of George III. and Queen 
Charlotte, &c., 21 

Rapin, history continued by Tindal, 27 

Reeve, Clara, 'Old English Baron,' 60 

Repton, landscape gardening, 246 

Revett, Nicholas, architect, visits 
Greece ; drawings and measurements 
of ancient monuments of Athens ; in- 
fluence on architectural studies, 248 

Reynolds, Sir J., Life of, by North- 
cote, 7. Remark on Wren's plan 
for rearranging the streets of London, 
14. Contributed to the ' Idler,' 213. 
Academical ' Discourses,' 223, 285. 
Defective education in art, 280. Early 
portraits, 281. Hisdeservings inart ; 
first exhibition of pictures, 282, His 
various portraits ; formation and 
scheme of Royal Academy, 283. 
Opening address, January 1 769, 284. 
Whole length portraits of King and 
Queen ; Somerset House ; early ex- 
hibitors, 285. Pictures from Dante 
and Shakespeare ; of sacred history, 
286. Female portraits j portraits of 



RUS 

men ; observation on his art by Mr. 
Burke ; ideal portraits ; portraits of 
children, 288. Origin of picture of 
' Babes in the Wood;' non-durability 
of his colouring, 289. Principal 
founder of British school of painting, 
290. Influence on art, 333 

Richardson, Samuel, ' Pamela, or Vir- 
tue Rewarded ;' ' History of Clarissa 
Harlowe ;' ' Sir Charles Grandison,' 
50, 53. How their epistolary form 
originated, 51. Popularity in France ; 
' Pamela ' ridiculed by Fielding in 
'Joseph Andrews, 53. Correspond- 
ence, 231 

Richardson, painter, mannerism, 20 

Roberts, D., R. A, painting of scenes for 
stage, 409. Works, 410, 411. Travels 
in Spain, Egypt, Syria, 410. Pictur- 
esque treatment of architectural views, 
411 

Robertson, Dr. William, * History of 
Scotland,' 31. ' History of Charles 
V.,' 32. ' History of America,' 33 

Rogers, ' Pleasures of Memory,' 8, 109. 
Ode to superstition, 108, Italy, &c. 
109 

Romances, English, of 1 7th century, 47, 

215 

Romanesque architecture, lo 

Romney, George, reputation as a 
painter; his portraits, 293, 294. 
Studies in Italy, 293. Execution 
often slight ; Lady Hamilton, 294. 
Pictures of Bacchantes, St. Cecilia, 
&c. ; Flaxman's estimate of Romney. 
295. Sonnet by Cowper in praise 
of, 296 

Roscoe, ' Life of Lorenzo de Medici ;' 
* Life of Leo X.,' 44 

Roubillac, best sculptor in England, 
reign of George II.; his works, 23 

Rowe, N., patronised by Government, 
2. ' Fair Penitent ' borrowed from 
' Fatal Dowry ' of Massinger, 32. 
'Jane Shore,' 180 

Royal Academy established in 1769, 
23, 283. Influence on progress of 
sculpture in England, 24. Early ex- 
hibitors, 285. Located in Somerset 
House, 285. In Trafalgar Square, 
342. In Burlington House, 361 

Runciman, John and Alexander, their 
reputation in Scotland ; ' King Lear 
in the Storm,' by John ; Alexander's 
Ossian paintings ; master of school 
of design at Edhiburgh, 325 

Ruskin, Mr., 252, 397 



INDEX. 



477 



RUS 

Russell, Earl, Memoirs and Corre- 
spondence of Moore, 232 
Rysbrach, foreign sculptor in England, 



SAINT PAUL'S, in the classic style, 
second only to St. Peter's at 
Rome, 14 

Savage, Life by Dr. Johnson, 42 

Scheemaker, sculptor in England, 22 

Scottish Academy, 346 

Scottish Gothc buildings, 10 

Scottish National Gallery, 355 

'Scots' Magazine,' the, 210 

Scott, Sir Walter, ' History of Scot- 
land, ' in ' Tales of a Grandfather, ' 
40, Lives of Dryden and Swift ; 
' Life of Napoleon,' 45, Life by 
Lockhart, 45. His novels and in- 
cognito, 66. 'Waverley,' 'Guy 
Mannering ; ' ' Antiquary ; ' ' Rob 
Roy ; ' ' Tales of my Landlord ; ' 
' Ivanhoe ; ' Jeffrey compares him 
with Shakespeare ; Letter from Ab- 
botsford by Sir David Wilkie on 
Scott family, 67, ' Monastery ; ' 

* Abbot ; ' ' Kenilworth ; ' ' Fortunes 
of Nigel,' &c. ; character of his ro- 
mances and novels ; claim to origi 
nality in historical novel, 68, 69. 
His knowledge of human nature as 
well as of history and tradition ; 
influence of Waverley novels on the 
writing of fiction, 69, Original pre- 
face to ' Antiquary,' 72. Translations 
from the German, 148. Resem- 
blance between delineations in Gotz 
von Berlichingen and Scott ; in- 
fluence of German ballads and Percy 
collection of ballads ; ' Border Min- 
strelsy ; ' ' Lay of the Last Minstrel,' 
149. ' Marmion ; ' great popularity 
of ' Lady of the Lake,' 150, Cha- 
racter of his poetry, 151. Essay on 

• Landscape Gardening,' 224, Cor- 
respondence, 232 

Scott, David, of Edinburgh, historical 
painter of great but unequal merit ; 
member of Royal Scottish Academy, 
356. Vasco de Gama and other 
works, 357 

Sculpture, deficiency of native, in 
England, till middle of 1 8th cen- 
tury ; good examples of early sculp- 
ture in cathedrals of Wells, Lincoln, 
&c. ; sepulchral monuments in United 
Kingdom by Italian, Flemish, French, 



SOU 

or English sculptors, 21. Rise and 
progress of British sculpture, 23, 421. 
Difficulties it has to encounter, 460. 
Painting more attractive, 461. Skill 
and capital required in sculpture ; 
state patronage of sculptural art, 
462 

Shakespeare, statue by Roubillac in 
British Museum, 23. Historical 
plays, 27. Painting from Shake- 
speare, 286, 327, 380. Revival of 
dramas on stage, 187 

Shaw, Dr. Thomas, ' Travels in Bar- 
bary and the Levant,' 235 

Shee, Sir Martin, P. R.A., 341. Por- 
traits in crayon ; in oil, 341. Thea- 
trical portraits ; literary works, 342. 
Estimate of Reynolds, 333. Of 
Wilkie, 376 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, poetry, 162. 
' Queen Mab ; ' ' Alastor, or the Spirit 
of Solitude ;' ' Revolt of Islam,' 163. 
Mrs. Shelley's note to the 'Revolt,' 
162. 'Beatrice Cenci;' 'Adonais;' 
'Elegy on Death of Keats;' other 
poems, 166 

Sheridan, life by Moore, 45. ' Pizarro,' 
189. The 'Duenna,' 198. The 
' Rivals,' ' School for Scandal,' 202. 
Remarks on it, 203. 'Critic,' 204 

Sheridan, Dr. Thomas, ' Intelligencer,' 
208 

Siddons, Mrs., as Mrs. Beverley in 
' Gamester,' 185. As Lady Macbeth, 
Isabella, Belvidera, 187 

Simson, William, R.S.A., domestic 
subjects and landscapes, 385, 406 

Smirke, Robert, R.A,, 310 

Smirke, Sir Robert, architect of Bri- 
tish Museum, 250 

Smith, Sydney, ' Edinburgh Review,' 
218. ' Letters from- Peter Plymley,' 
226 

Smith, George, landscapes in manner 
of Claude, 299 

Smith, J. and R., 'Microcosm,' 218 

Smollett, Tobias, 4, ' Continuation of 
Hume's History,' 37. His novels 
and their character, 55, 56. The 
' Critical Review,' 211 

Soane, Sir John, architect of Bank of 
England,' 249 

Southeme, ' Fatal Marriage,' 175 

Southey, 'History of Brazil,' 38. 
' History of the Peninsular War,' 39. 
' Life of Nelson,' 44. ' Life of Wes- 
ley,' 45. Poems; ' Thalaba,' 136. 
' Curse of Kehama,' 137. 'Roderick 



478 



INDEX. 



SPE 

last of the Goths,' 138. 'Vision of 
Judgment,' 139 

'Spectator,' 206, 210 

Speke, Captain J. H., 'Journal of dis- 
covery of the source of the Nile in 
the Lake Victoria-Nyanza,' 236 

Spence, E, B., sculptor and pupil of 
Gibson ; practised chiefly in Rome ; 
his picturesque art, 457 

Spencerian measure, 84, 95 

Stanfield, C., R. A., scene painter for 
theatres, 411. Sea pieces ; land- 
scapes ; works ; ' Peace and War,' 
412. Character of his art, 413 

Stanhope, Earl, ' History of England 
from 1701-1713;' History of Eng- 
land from the Treaty of Utrecht, 42 

Staunton, Sir George, ' Notes and Pro- 
ceedings during the British Embassy 
to Pekin,' 235 

Steele, patronised by Government, 2. 
Dedication of ' Grief a la Mode ' to 
Countess of Albemarle ; of ' Con- 
scious Lovers' to George I., 3. 
' Tender Husband ; ' 'Lying Lover,' 
178, Improved moral tone of his 
plays, 178-9. 'Tatler;' 'Guardian,' 
206. * Crisis,' 207 

Sterne, ' Tristram Shandy ; * * Senti- 
mental Journey,' 56. Subjects from 
them of pictures by masters of English 
school, 57 

Stothard, Thomas, R. A., painter and 
designer for books, 306. Illustrations 
for 'Novelist's Magazine;' 'Robinson 
Crusoe,' &c. ; oil pictures, 307, Sel- 
dom painted from models ; ' Canter- 
bury Pilgrims; ' Staircase of Burleigh, 
&c., 308. Wellington Shield, 309, 
His style graceful but mannered, 308 

Strange, Sir R., eminent engraver in 
line ; engravings from the Italian 
masters, 416. Plates, 417 

Stuart, Dr. Gilbert, * View of Society 
in Europe,' 222 

Stuart, James, architect ; visits Greece ; 
drawings and measurements of an- 
cient monuments of Athens, 248 

Stucco, use or rather abuse of stucco 
in external decoration of houses, 255, 
256 

Swift, Dean, * Gulliver's Travels ' and 
other works, 6, Life by Sir W. 
Scott, 45. Popularity of ' Gulliver's 
Travels,' 50. Letter to Gay on 
'Beggars' Opera,' 197. 'Examiner,' 
206. ' Conduct of the Allies ; ' 'In- 
telligencer,' 208. Correspondence 



TUR 

during reigns of William III., Queen 
Anne, &c., 226. Letter to Secretary 
St. John, 227. To Countess of 
Orkney, 228 
Syme, ' Embassy to the Kingdom of 
Ava,' 235 

TATLER, the, 206, 210 
Taylor, Sir Robert, architect, 
242 

Temple, Sir William, letters, 226 

Tennant, ' Anster Fair,' 142 

Tennyson, 122, 124, 170 

Thackeray, subject of writings generally 
middle or lower walks of life, 72 

Theobald, ' Censor,' 207 

Thomson, James, freedom from school 
of Pope, 8, Patronised by Pope, 78. 
' Seasons ; ' merit acknowledged by 
Warton and Wordsworth, 82. 
'Liberty;' ' Castle of Indolence,' 83. 
Example of it, 84. In masque of 
' Alfred ' is national anthem ' Rule 
Britannia,' 84. * Sophonisba,' 183 

Thomson, ' Collection of Original Scot- 
tish Airs ; ' plan subsequently adopted 
with ' Irish Melodies,' loi 

Thomson, Rev. J., of Duddingstone, 
his landscape pictures, 406 ; their de- 
fect in durability, 407. Engaged 
with Turner to make di^awings for 
Sir W. Scott's ' Provincial Antiqui- 
ties of Scotland,' 407 

Thomhill, Sir James, florid allegories 
painted on ceilings, &c., 17 

Thornton, Bonnel, contributions to 
' Connoisseur,' 216 

Tickell, patronised by Government, 2 

Tighe, Mrs., 'Psyche,' 142 

Timbrell, Henry, Irish sculptor of 
promise ; statue at Osborne executed 
for the Queen, subject from ' Lallah 
Rookh,' 448 

Tobin, 'The Honeymoon,' 205 

Townley, Rev. James, ' High Life 
below Stairs ; ' opposition in Edin- 
burgh of footmen to the performance 
of, 199 

Townshend, John, Rolliad, &c. 109 

Tudor style of architecture, 10 

Turner, Joseph M. W., R.A., early 
attempts in water-colour, 393. Oil 
paintings ; home and foreign travels, 
394. More appreciated by Aca- 
demy than by the public ; his study 
of nature, 394-5. Works, 395. 
Change of manner ; engravings; 
pictures in National Collection, 396-7 



INDEX, 



479 



TUR 

Turner, Sharon, histories of the Anglo- 
Saxons and of England, 39 l 

Tytler, ' Outlines of Universal History,' 
39 



VANBRUGH, Sir John, comedies, 
'Provoked Husband,' 179, 195. 
Built Blenheim and Castle Howard, 
239. His peculiar merit, 240 
Vandyke, historical British portraits, 19 
Vanloo, portrait paintei", 20 
Verrio, florid allegox-ies painted on 

ceilings, &c., 17 
Voyages and travels, 232-6 



WAAGEN, Dr., opinion of sculp- 
ture in England in 1 8th cen- 
tury, 22 

Walpole, Sir Robert, administration 
unfavourable to literature, 5 ; down- 
fall of administration hastened by 
attacks of wits, his enemies, 5 

Walpole, Horace, ' Castle of Otranto,' 
58. Letter to Rev. Mr. Cole, on origin 
of 'Castle of Otranto,' 59. 'Myste- 
rious Mother,' 186.' Contributions to 
the 'World,' 214. 'Anecdotes of 
Painting in England,' 223. Ex- 
celled in letter- writing ; his letters, 
231. Essay on modem gardening, 
245. Strawberry Hill, 260 

Warburton, Eliot, ' The Crescent and 
the Cross,' 235 

Ward, James, R.A., animal painter; 
' Alderney Bull,' 305 

Warton, Dr. Joseph, critic and poet, 
93. ' Essay on the Genius and 
Writings of Pope,' 73, 221. Classes 
him above Dryden, 79. Odes, 93. 
Literary disquisitions in * Adven- 
turer,' 213 

Warton, Thomas, poetry ; ode addressed 
to his brother Joseph, 93. Contri- 
butions to the ' Idler,' 213 

Water-colour Drawing, 414, 415. Es- 
tablishment in 1805 of Society of 
Painters in, 415 

Watson, ' Histories of Philip II. and 
Philip III. of Spain,' 39 

Watson, George, President of Scottish 
Academy ; portrait painter, 346 

Watson, Musgrave L., studies under 
Flaxman and at Rome ; his works, 

447 
Webster, dramas, 174 
Wesley, life by Southey, 45 



WOO 

West, Benjaniin, P. R. A., 313. His 
' Death of Wolfe ' effects change in 
historical costume, 314. Patronage of 
George III., 315. Works, 315. 
Their character, 316 

Westmacott, Sir Richard, R.A., art 
studies under Canova ; monumental 
sculpture; principal works, 436. 
Poetic sculpture ; relievos, 437 

Wharton, Duke of, the 'True Briton,' 
208 ; gift to Dr. Young, 88 

' Whig Examiner,' chief contributors 
Addison and Steele, 206 

White, Henry Kirke, poems, 1 09 

Wilkes, assisted by Churchill, writes in 
'North Briton,' which wages war 
against Hogarth, 81 

Wilkie, Sir David, R.A., letter to 
Mr. Phillips, portrait painter, on 
' Blue Boy,' 291. His earlier works, 
375-7; change in style, 377, 358; 
residence in Italy and Spain, 358. 
Works, 359, 377. Style of art, 
359, 374, 375- Paintings classed 
with the Dutch school, 376 

Wilkins, architect, 249, 255 

Wilks, actor, 183 

Williams, H. W. , water-colour pictures 
of Grecian scenery, 414 

Wilson, Andrew, landscapes ; Italian 
scenery, 405. Attends the First 
Napoleon at an inspection of works 
of modem artists at Genoa, 405 

Wilson, John, marine painter, one of 
the founders of Suffolk Street Society 
of British Artists. Associated with 
Roberts and Stanfield in scene 
painting at theatres, 409 

Wilson, John, ' Isle of Palms ;' ' City 
of the Plague ;' ' Moral Lectures ;' 
' Blackwood's Magazine,' 141 

Wilson, Richard, picture of ' Niobe ;' 
study and practice in Italy ; ' Lake 
Avemus,' 299. Not appreciated in 
England ; ' Rome from the Villa 
Madama ;' member of the Academy; 
character of his art, 300. Tardy 
recognition of his merit, 301 

Windhus, 'Joumey to Mequinez' for 
redemption of British captives, 235 

Wissing, painter of life-sized portraits, 
20 

Wolcott (Peter Pindar), 109 

Wollaton, II 

Wood, illustrations of Palmyra and 
Balbec, 247 

Woollett, line engraver of landscapes, 
417 



48o 



INDEX. 



WOR 

Wordsworth, new school of poetry, 
no, 113. 'Evening Walk;' 'Des- 
criptive Sketches;' ' Lyrical Ballads;' 
theory upon which they were written, 
1 14. General character of his poetry, 
117. The 'Excursion,' 118. Criti- 
cism of 'Edinburgh Review' upon 
it, 121. 'Prelude' and shorter 
pieces, 118, 119, 124. Letter to 
Professor Reed, alluding to the re- 
marks of Tennyson upon him 
(Wordsworth), 122, Sonnets, 123. 
Appointment to the Laureateship — 
official letter from Sir R. Peel ; ode 
upon the installation of H. R. H. 
Prince Albert as Chancellor of Cam- 
bridge, 125 

Wordsworth, Dr. Christopher, memoirs 
of William Wordsworth, 113 

'World,' the, 214 

Wren, .Sir Christopher, rebuilding of 
St. Paul's, 13. Fifty-one churches 
erected under his care, 14. Doubt- 
ful success of his steeples and some 
of his lesser churches ; library of 
Trinity College, Cambridge ; Green- 
wich Hospital, &c., 15. Death in 
reign of George L; Disputes with 
Cathedral Commissioners ; super- 



YOU 

seded in his patent for office of 
Surveyor of Royal Buildings; remark 
of his son in the ' Parentalia;' Wren 
commemorated by Pope in the 
'Dunciad,' 16, His inattention to 

• rules and detail of Gothic art, 15, 260 

Wyatt, James, architect, designed 
Fonthill Abbey, 261 

Wyatt, R. J., sculptor, 444. Studies in 
Canova's studio at Rome ; under 
Thorwaldsen; refinement of manner; 
female figures his forte ; opinion of 
Gibson on his works, 445, Com- 
mission from the Queen for * Pene- 
lope ; ' his style of art, 446 

Wycherley, comedies, 175 



YOUNG, actor, 188 
Young, Arthur, 'Tour in Ire- 
land; ' ' Tour in France,' 234 
YOUNG, Rev. Dr. Edward, pension 
under Walpole, 2. Dedications, 3. 
His poetry ; ' Universal Passion,' 87; 
'Last Day;' 'Force of Religion;' 
' Night Thoughts ;' present from 
Duke of Wharton — human skull 
with light set in it, 88. His tragedy 
of 'Revenge,' 183 



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INDEX 



Acton's Modern Cookery 20 

Alcock's Residence in Japan 16 

Allies on Formation of Christendom 14 

Allen's Discourses of Chrysostom 14 

Alpine Guide (The) 16 

Journal 20 

Althatjs on Medical Electricity 10 

Arnold's Manual of English Literature • . 6 

Aenott's Elements of Physics 8 

Arundines Cami 18 

Autumn Holidays of a Country Parson 6 

Atee's Treasury of Bible Knowledge 14 

Bacon's Essays by Whatelt 5 

Life and Letters, by Spedbing . . 4 

Works 5 

Bain's Mental and Moral Science 7 

-, on the Emotions and Will 7 

on the Senses and Intellect 7 

on the Study of Character 7 

Ball's Guide to the Central Alps ] G 

Guide to the Western Alps IG 

. Guide to the Eastern Alps 16 

Baring's Staff College Essays 6 

Batldon's Rents and Tillages 13 

Beaten Tracks 16 

Becker's Charicles and Qallus 17 

Beneey's Sanskrit-English Dictionary 6 

Bernard on British Neutrality 1 

Berwick's Forces of the Unirerse 8 

Black's Treatise on Brewing 20 

Blacklet's Word-Gossip 7 

— German-English Dictionary . . 6 

Blackie and Gosse's Poems 18 

Blaine's Rural Sports 19 

Veterinary Art 19 

Bourne on Screw Propeller 13 

's Catechism of the Steam Engine . . 13 

Examples of Modern Engines . . 13 

Handbook of Steam Engine 13 

Treatise on the Steam Engine 13 

Improvements in the same 13 

Bowdler's Family Shakspeare 18 

Bramlex-Mooee's Six Sisters of the Valley 17 
Brande's Dictionary of Science, Literature, 

and Art 10 

Brat's (C.) Education of the Feelings 7 

. Philosophy of Necessity 7 

On Force 7 

Browne's Exposition of the 39 Articles — 13 

Brijnel's Life of Brunel 3 

Buckle's History of Civilisation 2 

Bull's Hints to Mothers 20 

. Maternal Management of Children . . 20 

Bunsen's God in History 3 

Memoirs 4 



BUNSEN (E. De) on Apocrypha 15 

's Keys of St. Peter 15 

Burke's Vicissitudes of Families 4 

Burton's Christian Church 3 

Vikram and the Varapire 17 

Cabinet Lawyer 20 

Calvert's Wife's Manual 15 

CaRR'S Sir R. WniTTINGTON 18 

Cates's Biographical Dictionary 4 

Cats and Farlie's Moral Emblems 12 

Changed Aspects of Unchanged Truths 6 

Chesnet's Euphrates Expedition 17 

Indian Polity 2 

Waterloo Campaign 2 

Chesnet's and Reeve's Military Essays . . 2 

Child's Physiological Essays 11 

Chorale Book for England 11 

Clough's Lives from Plutarch 2 

CoLENSO (Bishop) on Pentateuch and Book 

of Joshua 14 

Commonplace Philosopher in Town and 

Country h 6 

Conington's Translation of Virgil's ^neid 18 

Contanseau's Two French Dictionaries . . 6 
CONTBEARE and Howson's Life and Epistles 

of St. Paul 13 

Cooper's Surgical Dictionary 10 

Copland's Dictionary of Practical Medicine 11 

Cotton's (Bishop) Life 3 

Coulthart's Decimal Interest Tables 20 

Counsel and Comfort from a City Pulpit . . 6 

Cox's (G. AV.) Aryan Mythology 3 

Tale of the Great Persian War 2 

Tales of Ancient Greece — 17 

Cox's (T.) Poems 18 

Crest's Encyclopaedia of Civil Engineering 13 

Critical Essays of a Counti-y Parson 6 

Ceookes on Beet-Root Sugar 13 

Cullet's Handbook of Telegraphy 12 

Cusack's Student's History of Ireland .... 2 

D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation in 

the time of Calvin 2 

Davidson's Introduction to New Testament 14 

Dead Shot (The), by Marksman 19 

De la Rive's Treatise on Electricity 8 

Denison's Vice-Regal Life 1 

De Tocqueville's Democracy in America . 2 

Disraeli's Lothair 17 

Novels and Tales 17 

DoBSON on the Ox 19 

Dove's Law of Storms 8 

Dotle's Fairyland 11 

Dter's City of Rome 2 



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Eastxake's Hints on Household Taste .... 12 

History of Oil Painting 11 

Life of Gibson 11 

Edinburgh Review 20 

Edmunds's Names of Places 7 

Elements of Botany 9 

Ellicott's Commentary on Ephesians .... 14 

Lectures on Life of Christ .... 14 

Commentary on Galatians .... 14 

Pastoral Epist. 14 

Philippians,&c. 14 

Thessalonians 14 

Ewaid's History of Israel 14 



Faiebaien's Application of Cast and 

Wrought Iron to Building 12 

Information for Engineers .... 12 

Treatise on Mills and Mill work 12 

Iron Shipbuilding 12 

Faeadat's Life and Letters 4 

Eaeeab's Chapters on Language 5 

Eamilies of Speech 7 

Eelkin on Hosiery & Lace Manufactiires . . 13 

Fennel's Book of the Roach 19 

Efoulkes's Christendom's Divisions 15 

FiTZWYGEAM On Horses and Stables 19 

FoEBEs's Earls of Granard 4 

Fowlee's Collieries and Colliers 20 

Feancis's Fishing Book 19 

Feasee's Magazine 20 

Feeskfield's Travels in the Caucasus 16 

Feoude's History of England 1 

• Short Studies 7 

GtANOt's Elementary Physics ... .77 8 

Giant (The) 17 

Gilbeet's Cadore 16 

. and Chuechill's Dolomites — 16 

Gietin's House I Live In 11 

Gledstone's Life of "Whitefield 3 

Goddaed's Wonderful Stories 17 

Goldsmith's Poems, Illustrated 18 

Gould's Silver Store 7 

Geaham's Book About Words 5 

Geant's Ethics of Aristotle 5 

Home Politics 2 

Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson 6 

Gray's Anatomy 11 

Geeenhow on Bronchitis 10 

Geove on Correlation of Physical Forces . . 9 

Guenet's Chapters of French History .... 2 

GwiLT's Encyclopsedia of Architecture .... 12 



Hampden's (Bishop) Memorials 3 

Hare on Election of Representatives 5 

H AETWiG's Harmonies of Nature 9 

Polar World 9 

■ Sea and its Living Wonders .... 9 

Tropical World 9 

Haughton's Manual of Geology 9 

Heeschel's Outlines of Astronomy 8 

Hewitt on the Diseases of Women 10 

Hodgson's Time and Space 7 

Theory of Practice 7 

Holmes's Surgical Treatment of Children . . 10 



Holmes's System of Surgery lo 

HooKEE and Walkee-Aenott's British 

Flora 9 

HoENE's Introduction to the Scriptures . . 14 

Compendium of the Scriptures . . 14 

How we Spent the Summer 16 

Howitt's Australian Discovery 16 

: Northern Heights of London .... 16 

Rural Life of England 16 

Visits to Remarkable Places 17 

HiJBNEE's Pope Sixtus 3 

Hughes's Manual of Geography 8 

Hume's Essays 7 

Treatise on Human Nature 7 

Ihne's History of Rome 2 

Ingelow's Poems IS 

Story of Doom 18 

Mopsa 18 



Jameson's Legends of Saints and Martyrs . . 12 

— Legends of the Madonna 12 

Legends of the Monastic Orders 12 

Legends of the Saviour 12 

Johnston's Geographical Dictionary 8 

Jukes on Second Death 15 

on Types of Genesis ..........' 15 

Kalisch's Commentary on the Bible 5 

■ Hebrew Grainmar 5 

Keith on Destiny of the World 14 

■■ Fulfilment of Prophecy 14 

Keel's Metallurgy, by Ceookes and 

ROHEIG 13 

KiEBT and Spence's Entomology 9 

Latham's English Dictionary 5 

River Plate 8 

Lawloe's Pilgrimages in the Pyrenees .... 16 

Leckx's History of European Morals 3 

Rationalism 3 

Leisure Hours in Town 6 

Lessons of Middle Age 6 

Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy 3 

Lewis's Letters 4 

LiDDELL and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon 6 

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